The IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics releases a report on health care spending and its relation to prescription drug use, finding an acceleration in the growth rate.
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According to a study in the British Medical Journal, as many as 12 million adults could be misdiagnosed during a medical visit, or about 5%.
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20140416/NEWS/304169948/misdiagnosis-could-affect-12m-u-s-adults-annually-study-finds&utm_source=AltURL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mpdaily?AllowView=VXQ0UnpwZTVEdldZL1IzSkUvSHRlRU90amtvZEErSlY=Catamaran, a large PBM, has issued its version of drug trend reporting, showing a per member per month trend of 2.4% in 2013 versus 2.6% in 2012. Upward pressure is almost all from brand drug unit price increases and greater use and cost of specialty drugs, offset by continued generic expansion. Catamaran is anticipating that trend could be as high as 5% in 2014, 6% in 2015 and 7.7% in 2016, driven by rising specialty use.
http://www.catamaranrx.com/uploadedFiles/Documents/Trend_Report/2014-Informed-Trends.pdfHealthways has released the annual Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, measuring health and quality of wellness in the United States.
http://info.healthways.com/wbi2013?hsCtaTracking=9c9c8f32-9155-409b-9d68-52a652938083%7Cdb3919ad-293c-4f04-8e02-6156b65b3122&utm_campaign=Well-Being%20Index%202013&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9XQT0I0O4nkLiziYwOg_AcrLkDtE-630MU-14jvS_kSMdjGQOX_Zr2ivRyPSu_-MakCu2AKjLSDtBDv4XHawiO7WYGaQ&utm_content=12499750&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=12499750Nuvance, a provider of radiology solutions, has acquired Accelerad, which provides cloud-based imaging exchange services.
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20140417/NEWS/304179947?AllowView=VDl3UXk1TzlDL09CbkJiYkY0M3hlMGVvaUVVZER1RT0=&utm_source=link-20140417-NEWS-304179947&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=hits&utm_name=topThe Congressional Budget Office has issued revised projections on the cost and other impacts of the health reform law.
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Symphony Technology Group, a health care focused private equity firm, is acquiring MDdatacor, a vendor of data collection and analytics products, and intends to combine it with other assets to form the Symphony Health Solutions business.
http://www.pehub.com/2014/04/symphony-technology-group-acquires-mddatacor/A study conducted in Canada and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine finds that as many as 31% of all written prescriptions are never filled, with cost, type of drug, age of the patient and regularity of visits to the same physician appearing to be associated with the rate of abandonment.
http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1852865&utm_source=H2RMinutes+PCMH-ACO+Apr.+15%2C+2014&utm_campaign=PCMH-ACO+mins+4%2F15%2F14&utm_medium=emailADP manages payroll and some aspects of benefit administration for a very large number of companies, so it has access to a lot of useful data. Some of this is…
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A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine finds that meeting meaningful use requirements in regard to seven performance measures for chronic disease care is only slightly associated with improvement on two performance measures, with worse performance on two and no difference in performance on three.
https://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1860495eCaring has raised $3.5 million for its product to use remote monitoring to help keep seniors in their homes rather than being institutionalized.
http://medcitynews.com/2014/04/ecaring-raises-3-5-million-for-monitoring-program-to-support-aging-in-place/?utm_source=MedCity+News+Subscribers&utm_campaign=d1fd0d6cea-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c05cce483a-d1fd0d6cea-67648197About 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.