A British Medical Journal study finds extensive variation in charges for normal and Caesarean baby deliveries in California hospitals, from $3296 to $37227 for normal, and $8312 to $70908 for Caesarean, with no apparent differences in quality or services provided during the delivery.
http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/racs-/-icd-9-/-icd-10/study-cost-for-baby-delivery-in-hospitals-varies-from-3k-to-37k.htmlThe Centers for Disease Control released a report on usage of electronic medical records by physicians, finding that 78.4% of physicians have some kind of EHR in 2013, up from 51% in 2010, but only 48.1% are using a "basic" system, one that would support meaningful use requirements.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db143.pdfWeight loss company Retrofit has gained a few more pounds, errr, dollars, $5 million to be exact, for expanding its business.
According to the Patient Centered Primary Care Consortium implementing a medical home has astounding benefits, including reductions in cost, better health outcomes and higher patient satisfaction. The Group published its annual report of the state of the evidence on the benefits of medical homes, which unfortunately contains methodological issues too numerous to detail.
http://www.milbank.org/uploads/documents/reports/Patient-Centered_Medical_Homes_Impact_on_Cost_and_Quality.pdfAccording to the American Hospital Association, hospitals provided over $45 billion in uncompensated care in 2012, including charity care and bad debt write-offs, and they had $56 billion in under compensated care, which is there way of calculating that Medicare and Medicaid paid them less than the cost of care.
http://www.ahanews.com/ahanews/jsp/display.jsp?dcrpath=AHANEWS/AHANewsNowArticle/data/ann_011414_underpayment&domain=AHANEWSAvalere Health projects that Medicaid enrollment in private health plans will grow substantially, up 20% over last year and up by 38% from 2013 to 2016, as more states push most or all of their Medicaid eligibles into private plans and the expansions under the reform law kick in.
http://www.avalerehealth.net/expertise/managed-care/insights/analysis-medicaid-plans-expected-to-grow-20-this-year-under-aca-expansionUnitedHealth Group, the first of the nation's large health plan companies to report earnings, said per share profit rose from $1.20 in the fourth quarter of 2012 to $1.41 this year. Revenue rose to over $31 billion. The company affirmed a forecast of $5.40 to $5.60 in earnings per share for 2014.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-16/unitedhealth-quarterly-profit-climbs-as-enrollment-rises.htmlTeladoc, which provides remote consultations for individual consumers and health plan members, said that it now covers 7.5 million people and will double its revenues in 2014.
http://www.teladoc.com/news/2014/01/15/teladoc-announces-adding-one-million-new-members-and-expects-to-double-annual-revenue-in-2014/A statistical brief from AHRQ looked at trends in health expenditures for the over-65 population for 2001, 2006 and 2011, in constant dollars. $414.3 billion was spent on health care for this population in 2011, $100 billion higher than in 2001. Average per person expense was $9863 compared to $8815 in 2001. The percent of people with an ER visit, inpatient stay or hospital outpatient visit declined from 2001 to 2011 and outpatient care and drugs accounted for more expense in 2011 than in 2001. Average costs for all types of services were higher in 2011. Medicare paid for 62.4% of the elderly's health expense in 2011 compared to 54.7% in 2001.
http://meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/data_files/publications/st429/stat429.pdfAbout 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.