A study reported in JAMA examines the use of telemedicine techniques to improve the management of pain and depression in cancer patients.
Read More
The state of human knowledge is often imperfect and medical treatment provides frequent examples of that. What we think we know often turns out to be erroneous as two recent studies published in JAMA demonstrate.
There are so many sources of the rapid increases in national health spending that it is hard to track them all. A recent article estimates the costs of “medicalization”, the process of turning problems into medical issues which end up incurring health costs.
Struggling with the continuing rise in health insurance premiums, Rhode Island’s Insurance Commissioner takes some creative steps to attempt to slow the rise of hospital costs, which are a major contributor to the premium increases.
Medical care provided near the end of a patient’s life accounts for a significant portion of total national health spending and is often inconsistent with patient wishes. New research evaluates the effects of a more detailed set of physician advance orders for frail and elderly persons.
Sitting indoors seeking relief from the summer heat? Here’s a montage of cool and refreshing health care items, including CPOE systems, accountable care organizations, Massachusetts’ reform experience, reducing imaging, and medical management trends.
Coventry gets slapped with a two hundred-million-plus dollar damage award for failing to comply with Louisiana’s PPO statute. Ouch that hurts. A vivid example of the need to pay careful attention to each jurisdiction’s regulations when running a national business.
Preventive measures can help patients delay or prevent illness or can lead to early detection and usually better outcomes. Unfortunately many patients fail to take even the most basic preventive steps. A new study suggests just how difficult it is to change that behavior.
One approach to lowering health care spending is to lower the costs of doing business for providers. One big item in those costs is malpractice insurance. Cutting malpractice costs could also lead to a reduction in ordering of unnecessary tests and services.
Medicare has an impending value-based purchasing program for hospitals. Payments would be based on performance against quality standards. Some hospitals ability to improve performance may be limited by the economic and workforce characteristics of their location, according to new research.
We light up the sky with a scintillating selection of health care bombshells. Okay, maybe not that great, but some hopefully useful info on the VA’s health information system, MRIs and emergency cardiac care, business method and process patents, end-of-life care, actuaries’ views on how to control costs and, of course, more issues in Massachusetts.
A critical component of personalized medicine is various molecular diagnostic tests. AHRQ has issued a lengthy report on the state of these tests, examining their quality and clinical utility.
The Commonwealth Fund issues one of its regular reports designed to demonstrate how bad the US health system is compared to those of other developed countries. Unfortunately, the report is based almost exclusively on subjective survey data and fails to provide any adjustments to create a truer picture of the status of our system vis-a-vis others.
Where does all that health spending go and what areas are incurring some of the largest increases? An AHRQ statistical brief looks at hospital costs from 2001 and 2007 and identifies the ten fastest growing diagnoses by cost in that period.
A common perception is that there are too many hospital readmissions which could be prevented with better discharge planning. A new study indicates that scheduling follow-up visits may not help prevent readmissions, most of which are unrelated to the original admisssion in any event.
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 [email protected].
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
Overcast
PocketCasts
Radio Public
Stitcher
Anchor
RSS - Posts