Nursefriendly.com: Cost of Healthcare

Showing posts with label Cost of Healthcare. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Report: Americans Give Online Thumbs Down To #healthinsurers – Capsules - The KHN Blog #healthcare #hcsm #mdchat #rnchat

By Christian Torres
October 3rd, 2011, 6:02 AM
Americans’ dislike for health insurers is a trending topic.
Seventy percent of social media comments about major health insurers were negative during the past year, according to a new report released by Amplicate, a social media analytics service. The company analyzed public tweets, Facebook posts and comments on its own website between September 2010 and August 2011. Social media users made 2,311 comments total about 18 insurers, and those opinions were shared more than 632,000 times. Insurers aren’t alone, and they aren’t the most talked about: In the past year, U.S airlines generated over 34,000 comments and U.S. banks had nearly 22,000 comments.

via capsules.kaiserhealthnews.org

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InspirationalNursing.com:"InspirationalNursing.com. Touching Poems, and Inspiring stories that touch the heart and occasionally bring a tear to your eye. Affection, Ambition, Angels In Our Lives, Animals, Babies, Bereavement, Caring, Caring, Children, Christian Stories, Christmas, Computers & The Internet, Death, Dependability, Determination, Dying, Easter, Emergency Medical Services (EMS), End of Life, Etc., Friendship, God's Creatures, Grief, Holiday Thoughts, Honesty, Hospice Poems, etc."
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Jocularity.com (Former home to the Journal of Nursing Jocularity (JNJ)):"Nursing & Medical Humor. Find hundreds of jokes and links to sites that will make you smile. Therapeutic Humor Associations, Battle of the Sexes, Bedside Nursing Humor, Brain Teasers, Clowning, Clowns, Therapeutic Humor & Comedy Links, Dental Humor, Emergency Department Humor, General Nursing Humor, Geriatrics, Senior Citizen, etc."
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Legalnursingconsultant.org:"This website is intended to be a resource for Legal Nurse Consultants, Attorneys looking to use their services, and nurses looking to enter the field of Legal Nurse Consulting. On our site you'll find a directory of LNCs by state and specialty."
http://www.legalnursingconsultant.org

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Nursefriendly.com:"Nationwide Nursing Resources: In this Nursing Portal you'll find information on Nursing Jobs, Nursing Schools, Nurse Degrees, LPNs, RNs, APNs, Nursing Associations and much more."
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Nursinga2z.com:"It is our intent for this Alphabetical, A to Z index to be a comprehensive listing (In Progress) of Nursing-related resources on the Internet. It is indexed by Google and fully searchable."
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Nursingdiabetics.com:"Welcome to NursingDiabetics.com. Here you will find information on all aspects of Diabetes, a disease that afflicts millions of people world wide. I'll be adding pages as fast as I can research the information so remember to bookmark this page and return."
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Nursingdiscussions.com:"This website will be a portal to Nursing Discussion boards throughout the Web. If your site has a discussion board we don't have listed here, please contact us."
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Nursingentrepreneurs.com:"Nationwide Nursing resource to nurse entrepreneurs looking to nework and start home based businesses. On it you will find links to small and large business related resources."
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Nursinghumor.com:"Nursing & Medical Humor. Find hundreds of jokes and links to sites that will make you smile. Therapeutic Humor Associations, Battle of the Sexes, Bedside Nursing Humor, Brain Teasers, Clowning, Clowns, Therapeutic Humor & Comedy Links, Dental Humor, Emergency Department Humor, General Nursing Humor, Geriatrics, Senior Citizen, etc."
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Andrew Lopez, RN
Nursefriendly, Inc. A New Jersey Corporation.
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Friday, June 10, 2011

Top 5 Don’ts for Doctors in Primary Care - By RONI CARYN RABIN-NYTimes.com

Antibiotics for sore throats and CT scans for minor head injuries in children are among the most wasteful practices in primary care medicine, a national physicians’ group said last week. Among the others are electrocardiograms performed routinely on healthy adults and widespread prescribing of brand-name statins to reduce L.D.L., or “bad” cholesterol.

Related

More Vital Signs Columns

The group issuing the report, the National Physicians Alliance, an organization of some 22,000 physicians, developed three separate “Top 5” lists for primary care doctors — internists, family doctors and pediatricians — that were essentially lists of medical “don’ts.” The lists were published online in The Archives of Internal Medicine.

via nytimes.com

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Thursday, May 26, 2011

Swimmer's ear is a common and expensive malady that can be prevented- Linda Shrieves, latimes.com

By Linda Shrieves, Orlando Sentinel

- Swimmer's ear is a common malady every summer as millions of Americans plunge into pools, lakes and oceans seeking relief from the heat.
But swimmer's ear takes a toll — and not just on parents and patients.

According to a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, swimmer's ear also costs the nation a lot of money and time spent on doctors' visits. In 2007, the latest data available, the CDC found that an estimated 2.4 million health care visits were attributed to swimmer's ear — at a cost of about $500 million.

via latimes.com

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Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Rising health care costs put focus on illegal immigrants - USATODAY.com

Juan Perez had stomach pains for a month before deciding to visit a health clinic here that is open Thursday nights so migrant farmworkers don't miss a day working in the fields.

As an illegal, uninsured immigrant, Perez has had problems in the past — not only with his health, but with navigating the U.S. health care maze. In Michigan, there was no interpreter at his local health clinic, the bills had to be paid in installments, and co-workers warned that a visit to a doctor could lead to deportation. In North Carolina, he's found a health care home at Tiffany Revels' weekly clinic — providing he can hitch a ride there.

"The biggest concern is getting sick, because you don't have anyone here," Perez says after Revels, a family nurse practitioner at the federally funded clinic, prescribes two antibiotics and Pepto-Bismol tablets for his bacterial gastritis. "You are here by yourself."

via usatoday.com

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Action For Better Healthcare » Finally a roadmap for a coordinated approach to patient care

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) released their long anticipated regulations dealing with ten pages of the 2,200-page March 2010 Affordable Care Act. Those ten pages are really the crux of what healthcare reform is all about and it is to improve the way we provide healthcare in this country.

Although these regulations required another 400 plus pages of explanation at least patients, families and caregivers now have an “expectation roadmap” outlining how the care they receive can be better. For the first time we have clear-cut targets to help us successfully achieve two-thirds of the triple aim – improving the quality of care and improving patient/family satisfaction with their care. The third part of the triple aim, monetary savings, should occur as a byproduct of the above clinical improvements.

Many doctors, nurses and others I talk with find the proposed regulations overwhelming and confusing. But remember, CMS is looking to us now for suggestions on how the recommendations can be improved before they become final. So be sure to contribute your comments.

via actionforbetterhealthcare.com

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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

ACP Calls for National Strategy on Healthcare for Immigrants

A South Carolina bill that would make it illegal to transport undocumented persons to a hospital and other legislative efforts to deny medical services to immigrants have prompted calls from the American College of Physicians (ACP) for a national policy to override such state rules.

"We need to have some way to make sure everybody gets healthcare," said Virginia Hood, MD, president of the ACP and an internist with Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, VT. "There [are] all kinds of legislation and regulations coming out at the state level which could have an effect on the provision of healthcare for immigrants, and we think this isn't something that can be dealt with on a state-by-state basis. There needs to be a national strategy."

The South Carolina bill, she says, "would make it illegal to transport immigrants to a hospital anywhere."

Other legislation introduced in several other states, she says, would dictate that "before someone could be treated in an emergency room, or even after they're treated, immigration status should be documented or reported," she says. This inappropriately turns doctors and paramedics into immigration officials.

via healthleadersmedia.com

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Feds: NH hospital to pay $2.2 million settlement - Boston.com

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center will pay more than $2.2 million to settle charges it improperly billed various federal health programs, Vermont's top federal prosecutor said Tuesday.
Of the total, more than $80,000 will go to the state of Vermont, $61,000 to New Hampshire, $1.5 million to the federal government and more than $334,000 will go to Dr. Thomas Prendergast, the former Dartmouth-Hitchcock physician who blew the whistle on the improper billing.
Based in Lebanon, N.H., Dartmouth-Hitchcock is a major teaching hospital affiliated with the Dartmouth Medical School and has a big footprint in northern New England. It discharged more than 13,000 New Hampshire patients in 2010 and nearly 10,000 from Vermont.
Prendergast told authorities the hospital improperly billed federal programs including Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs and the military's Tricare health insurance system for services delivered by resident physicians in training who were unsupervised by more senior attending physicians.

via boston.com

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Saturday, April 23, 2011

Patients Are Not Consumers - NYTimes.com

Earlier this week, The Times reported on Congressional backlash against the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a key part of efforts to rein in health care costs. This backlash was predictable; it is also profoundly irresponsible, as I’ll explain in a minute.

But something else struck me as I looked at Republican arguments against the board, which hinge on the notion that what we really need to do, as the House budget proposal put it, is to “make government health care programs more responsive to consumer choice.”
Here’s my question: How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as “consumers”? The relationship between patient and doctor used to be considered something special, almost sacred. Now politicians and supposed reformers talk about the act of receiving care as if it were no different from a commercial transaction, like buying a car — and their only complaint is that it isn’t commercial enough.

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N.Y. Taxpayers May Pay Big $$$ for Heart Transplant for Convicted Rapist - FoxNews.com

Taxpayers may pay $800,000 to give a life-saving heart transplant to an upstate rapist whose crime of incest was so "grotesquely criminal" that a prosecutor said he should "rot in prison."

If doctors give the OK, Kenneth Pike, 55, would be the first New York prisoner to get a heart transplant. Pike was flown Monday from the state prison in Coxsackie to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, where 49 patients are awaiting donor hearts.

Pike is serving an 18-to-40-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage relative in Auburn. He's eligible for parole in 2013.

A sister and a niece say news of Pike's possible heart transplant has renewed family divisions over the crime that occurred 17 years ago.

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Friday, April 22, 2011

More senior citizens are dying at home - Miami-Dade - MiamiHerald.com

By John Dorschner

jdorschner@MiamiHerald.com

After years of experts and patients saying people at the end of life might be more comfortable dying at home, a new study says that may finally be happening: fewer seniors in the United States and South Florida are dying in hospitals.
But the same survey finds that in the last months of life for seniors throughout the United States and especially in Miami, the trend is for more of them to see large numbers of specialists and to spend more time in expensive intensive care units.
Those are the results of the latest study from the Dartmouth Atlas, a project of the Dartmouth Medical School. The project for years has been using Medicare data to expose anomalies in healthcare costs and wide geographic disparities in expenses.

“Miami is practically off the charts,” says David Goodman, a Dartmouth researcher who was the lead author of the study. “It really continues to stand out” for having the highest costs and most extensive treatments in the last months of life, even when adjusted for age, ethnicity, race and severity of illness.

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Thursday, April 21, 2011

Drugs: Spending on prescriptions is slowing - Health Key

mericans consume a lot of prescription drugs. And they seem especially fond of those to lower their cholesterol, relieve their heartburn, cheer them up and take away pain. Overall, however, their spending on such drugs is slowing.
A new report from consulting firm IMS Health offers a quick, but thorough, look at Americans' consumption of, and spending on, prescription drugs. In 2010, the report says, we spent more than $307 billion on medication. That’s up over 2009, but only by 2.3%.
The report’s introduction frames the trend nicely: “A number of factors contributed to this comparatively and historically low growth, including fewer patient visits to doctors’ offices, patent expirations for branded products, expanded usage of existing generic products and less spending on new products.”
Now, drum roll, please...Here are the top five classes of drugs prescribed in America:

via healthkey.com

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Monday, April 11, 2011

Is the US healthcare system too litigious or too careless? | boxcuttersinc

In a recent study published in Health Affairs, researchers at the University of Utah and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement found that errors “occurred in one-third of hospital admissions”. Moreover, they “found at least ten times more confirmed, serious events than … other methods.”

Commenting on this study, Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief Susan Dentzer said:

Without doubt, we’ve seen improvements in health care over the past decade, and even pockets of excellence, but overall progress has been agonizingly slow. It’s clear that we still have a great deal of work to do in order to achieve a healthcare system that is consistently high-quality–that is, safe, effective, patient-centered, efficient, timely, and devoid of disparities based on race or ethnicity.

Wow, what an indictment of a healthcare system that many consider to be the best in the world!

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Should Emergency Departments Turn Away Nonurgent Patients? - TIME

A few weeks ago, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) launched a campaign to derail proposed policies to reduce the use of emergency departments (EDs). ACEP's problem with the campaign is the logic that underpins it: policymakers think that ED use, in aggregate, is a costly problem and a major driver of unnecessary health care costs in the U.S. ACEP claims that rather than delivering unnecessary care, EDs treat many patients who have no alternative when they need comprehensive medical care in a timely manner; that is, EDs deliver altogether necessary care.

ACEP has challenged reports from South Carolina and Massachusetts suggesting that a high percentage of ED use is unnecessary and that reform efforts — particularly payment incentives — will reduce "inappropriate" usage. In South Carolina, a state legislator, Representative Bill Herbkersman, even recommended that special call boxes be placed in the homes of more than 3,000 Medicaid patients to give them 24-hour access to nurses who could diagnose them over the phone and reduce costly and unnecessary ED visits. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia has also increased the co-pay on ED visits from $100 to $200 and has been steering its members away from EDs to urgent-care centers and retail clinics (with the help of a Google Maps application, soon be available as an app for members' mobile phones).

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Rand: High-deductible health plans produce good and bad outcomes | Healthcare Finance News

A new study by the Rand Corporation indicates people on high-deductible health plans significantly reduce their healthcare spending – but they're also cutting back on preventive care.

The study of more than 800,000 families across the country showed that when families changed to health plans that carried an annual deductible of $1,000 or more per person, their healthcare spending dropped by an average of 14 percent. Healthcare spending was also lower for those same families with a moderate health savings account.

Savings decreased, however, for families with an HSA where employers contributed more than half of an individual’s deductible.

via healthcarefinancenews.com

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Want Medicare To Pay For Home Care? See Your Doctor : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

Starting next month, seniors getting health care in their homes will have to see a doctor to make sure they actually need the service. Otherwise Medicare won't pay.

Sounds logical, right?

Not so, says a coalition of health providers and consumer groups that complains the rule is overly burdensome on seniors and doctors.

Home health agencies, doctor and consumer groups say frail, homebound seniors won't be able to get to a doctor's office because of their health status or lack of doctors in rural areas.

They also worry that many doctors are either unaware of the new regulation or won't know how to comply with its documentation requirements that call on physicians to certify they or another health care provider, such as a nurse practitioner, have seen a patient for the specific reason of certifying the need for home health care.

"There is a lot of confusion out there, and patients may lose access to their care," said Nora Super, an AARP lobbyist.

via npr.org

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Sunday, April 3, 2011

Men avoid the doctor, survey finds - Chicago Sun-Times

Almost half of men 18 to 50 don’t have a primary-care physician, and a third haven’t had a checkup in more than a year, a new survey shows.
About 40 percent of men in their 40s have never had their cholesterol tested, and 70 percent have never had a prostate exam, according to the national survey of 519 men commissioned by Esquire magazine.

“It’s a stereotype about men that they don’t like to go to the doctor, that they’d rather just go when there’s a problem,” says Esquire’s Ryan D’Agostino.

The survey found that 45 percent of the men surveyed didn’t have a primary-care doctor. Among other findings:

via suntimes.com

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Friday, April 1, 2011

New Health Dialogue (NewHealthDialog) on Twitter

New Health Dialogue

@NewHealthDialog Washington, D.C.

Policy blog focusing on issues of cost, coverage, and quality in health reform.

http://www.newhealthdialogue.com

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NewHealthDialog New Health Dialogue

Happy Birthday Affordable Care Act! May you have many healthy years ahead, and may your many fine qualities continue to win new friends #ACA

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Please RT: Former Cap Hill press sec Emily Hershenson missing! Please review pics. Help bring her home bit.ly/gUsFd6

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Jack Wennberg: "Penalizing high cost hospitals [...] would surely dampen enthusiasm to build more hospital capacity" http://wapo.st/dPWjg1

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"The U.S. Government: An insurance conglomerate protected by a standing army" @ezraklein with a mindblowing graph http://wapo.st/hUpMXl

10 Mar Favorite Retweet Reply

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SenatorDurbin Senator Dick Durbin

by NewHealthDialog

Just talked to @BillGates about global health & development--#GatesFoundation doing important work. Photo: http://1.usa.gov/f9k8WL

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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Most Canadians see health care as top issue: poll - CTV News

A growing number of Canadians see health care, ahead of the economy, as the top issue facing the country, according to a new poll.

The Nanos Research poll, conducted for CTV and The Globe and Mail, comes on the eve of a federal budget that is expected to focus on job creation and Canada's economic recovery.

It found that nearly 30 per cent of respondents, when unprompted, said health care was the top priority (percentage-point change from last month in brackets):

Health care: 29.2 per cent (+6.3)
Jobs / Economy: 18.1 per cent (-2.1)
Education: 8.8 per cent (+3.5)
Environment: 7.5 per cent (-2.8)
Debt: 3.8 per cent (-1.4)
Unsure: 9.1 per cent (-3.3)

Last April, with Canada still staggering from a worldwide recession, more than half of all Canadians felt the economy was the top issue.

Health care, by contrast, fell below 15 per cent.

via ctv.ca

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amednews: Model legislation drafted for out-of-network balance billing :: March 29, 2011 ... American Medical News

A legislative organization calls on hospitals, insurers and physicians to disclose when patients must pay for care.

By Emily Berry, amednews staff. Posted March 29, 2011.

As several states consider whether, or how, to restrict balance billing by out-of-network physicians, the National Conference of Insurance Legislators on March 6 adopted model legislation on the issue.

Rather than explicitly banning or allowing physicians to bill patients when insurance doesn't cover what a physician is owed, the model legislation calls for greater transparency on the part of hospitals, insurers and doctors to alert patients to the possibility that they could end up paying out of pocket for care.

The model bill builds on laws recently adopted in Louisiana and Texas, according to NCOIL's announcement.

via ama-assn.org

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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

New Health Insurance Survey: 9 Million Adults Joined Ranks of Uninsured Due to Job Loss in 2010; Few Viable Health Insurance Options Exist for Unemployed - The Commonwealth Fund

An estimated nine million working-age adults—57 percent of people who had health insurance through a job that was lost—became uninsured in the last two years, according to the Commonwealth Fund 2010 Biennial Health Insurance Survey, released today. The survey paints a bleak picture for the 43 million adults under age 65 who reported that they or their spouse lost a job in the past two years, finding that job losses are often compounded by the loss of health insurance, leaving families vulnerable to catastrophic financial losses and bankruptcy in the event of a serious illness or accident.

According to the report, Help on the Horizon: How the Recession Has Left Millions of Workers Without Health Insurance, and How Health Reform Will Bring Relief, the unemployed have great difficulty finding affordable health care. Only 25 percent of people who lost employer health insurance were able to find another source of health insurance coverage, and only 14 percent continued their job-based coverage through COBRA. In addition, purchasing individual coverage was not a viable option for most people. Seventy-one percent of adults who tried to buy individual coverage in the past three years, or 19 million people, either found it difficult or impossible to find a plan that fit their needs; found it difficult or impossible to find a plan they could afford; or were turned down or charged a higher price for coverage because of a preexisting condition.

“This survey tells a story of millions of Americans who lost their jobs during the recession, lost their health benefits too, and had essentially no place to turn for affordable health care coverage—putting their health and financial security at risk,” said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis. “The silver lining is that the Affordable Care Act has already begun to bring relief to families. Once the new law is fully implemented, we can be confident that no future recession will have the power to strip so many Americans of their health security.”

via commonwealthfund.org

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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Friday, June 10, 2011

Related

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Friday, April 22, 2011

By John Dorschner

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Monday, April 11, 2011

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Friday, April 1, 2011

New Health Dialogue

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

A legislative organization calls on hospitals, insurers and physicians to disclose when patients must pay for care.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

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