We want to wish all our loyal (and not so loyal!) readers a wonderful Thanksgiving. A recent poll suggested that many Americans feel that the relentless focus on the shopping aspects of holidays has spoiled their traditional meaning. We hope that you have an enjoyable day with family and friends, who give so much meaning to our lives. We can all be very grateful that we live in this country, with so many freedoms and still so much opportunity.
The Government Accounting Office examines trends in drug spending in Medicare Part B, which covers drugs administered in a doctor’s office. Looking at the 55 most expensive Part B drugs, GAO found that Medicare accounts for much of the overall spending on these products.
Employee benefits consulting firm releases results from its latest survey of employers on health benefits. While spending growth has moderated in recent years, it continues at an above inflation and GDP rate of increase and employers are using multiple strategies to shift cost to employees and contain spending.
An article in Nature describes a study of over 1000 individual genomes to identify variation. This is an important step in the continuing evolution of personalized medicine, which is proving to take longer and be more complex that may have initially been imagined.
Thanks be given for our last Potpourri before Thanksgiving, a table spread with delectable bites of information on hospital readmissions and quality measure performance, health plan enrollment growth, health price rises, use of deductibles in employer-based health insurance and trends in employment of physicians.
The “fiscal cliff” deficits, and debt are very much in the news these days. A Congressional Budget Office report indicates how much of our spending difficulty is attributable to health care and lays out alternative scenarios for coping with that spending and its effect on the debt.
A substantial amount of Medicare and overall health spending is incurred in the last few months of patients’ lives. Much of this spending is due to intensive care that obviously is rather superfluous at that point. A new article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology reports on research regarding end-of-life discussions and resulting care.
Everyone is concerned about health spending growth, the primary cause of which is unit price increases. So why are obvious methods to reduce unit price of services, like substituting less-expensive providers, ignored? An article in Health Affairs looks at limitations of use of nurse practitioners.
Research reported in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that a hospital pay-for-performance program in part of England may have led to reduced mortality for three conditions, with pneumonia showing a statistically significant decrease.
Thank God the election is finally over, but our Potpourri is never-ending, this week bringing you the latest on why comparative effectiveness research results don’t translate to practice, innovations to reduce health spending, the value of medication adherence, factors related to end-of-life quality and MedPAC on new quality measures for avoidable hospital and ER use.
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].
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