We know medical spending tends to grow rapidly in the United States--what is happening in the rest of the world? A Towers Watson survey attempts to answer that question.
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The IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics issued a report on cancer care facts and trends.
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A TowersWatson survey finds that 59% of workers are satisfied with their health benefits, a drop of 10% since 2007, with older workers and those in poorer health reporting the lowest levels of satisfaction. Cost is the greatest source of discontent with health benefits.
http://www.towerswatson.com/en-US/Insights/Newsletters/Americas/insider/2014/retirement-security-tops-list-of-employee-concernsResearch in Health Affairs finds that ambulatory surgery centers take significantly less time per procedure than do hospital outpatient surgery centers, with lower costs and equal or better outcomes, suggesting that their use should be encouraged.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/5/764.abstractA study published in Health Affairs examines the effects of the recession on hospital finances, finding that the weak stayed weak but largely survived.
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Axial Healthcare has received an investment of $1.75 million to build out clinical decision support tools for pain medication therapies.
http://medcitynews.com/2014/06/axial-healthcare-raises-1-8m-big-data-approach-pain-management/?utm_source=MedCity+News+Subscribers&utm_campaign=f0f22cd68e-RSS_Daily+Top+Stories&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c05cce483a-f0f22cd68e-67648197A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine finds that medical home-qualified physician groups produced improvement on only four of ten quality improvement measures, compared to non-medical home practices using EHRs or practices using paper records, and the improvements were quite modest.
http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1877017The Congressional Budget Office has updated its estimates of how many people will pay the penalty for failing to have health insurance, finding that of the 30 million uninsured in 2016 only about 7 million will have to pay a penalty and two-thirds of those are lower income individuals. The amounts collected are also projected to be lower than previously estimated.
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45397-IndividualMandate.pdfThe Office of Inspector General of HHS has issued a report saying that CMS likely overpaid for office visits in Medicare by $6.7 billion and recommended that CMS take efforts to recover this money and to track abusive physicians better. CMS basically blew OIG off, I mean after all, what's a few billion more of wasted taxpayer funds.
https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-04-10-00181.pdfThe Center for Public Integrity has launched a series of articles on how Medicare Advantage plans use diagnostic coding to secure higher reimbursements, like adding to pressure to reform payments and the practice of home visits to secure diagnostic codes.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/06/04/14840/why-medicare-advantage-costs-taxpayers-billions-more-it-should?utm_campaign=KHN%3A+Daily+Health+Policy+Report&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=13083223&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8IwGluHUgpMFkK2KmIDBDHi0Zpd9MdblpwfWf5hldNCukPLexirwcMUG2UrX8XQCxefi8UzhmgkPod1FDUng6Y88v2QA&_hsmi=13083223A survey for Enroll America, funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, explores why some people did and did not enroll on the exchanges in its initial open enrollment period.
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About this Blog
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.