Friday Links
The end of debate. Deleting data from research files. Cell phones and cancer. Does residency teach waste? Learning to let go.
Month: December 2014
Cavalcade of Risk #223
Bob Wilson of Workers’ Comp Insider presents this week’s rockin’ and rhymin’ risky roundup of risk-related posts. Clever *and* informative – that’s what I call win-win.
Germs and Quality Improvement
Medicare has stopped paying for care related to surgical site infections. Further, it fines hospitals whenever too many patients need to be readmitted within 30 days of discharge. How is this affecting care at the physician and patient level? As Karen Sibert writes, some odd things are happening: An edict just came down in one…
Top Health Industries Issues for 2015
What are the top health industry issues for 2015? A PwC report believes the following 10 issues should top the list: HRI’s top 10 issues for the health industry in the year ahead: Do-it-yourself healthcare. U.S. physicians and consumers are ready to embrace a dramatic expansion of the high-tech, personal medical kit. Wearable technology, smartphone-linked devices…
Do quality rankings matter?
There have many policy initiatives to measure and improve quality of care. For instances, NCQA’s HEDIS measure are the most widely used quality measures among commercial insurers. Since employers generally choose insurance plans for employees (or at least select the menu of insurance options for employees), one would expect that employers would look for high…
Post-Turkey Day HWR
My favorite insurance blogger (Hank Stern) hosts a post-Turkey Day edition of the Health Wonk Review over at InsureBlog. Check it out!
US Health Care Spending in 2013
What is happening with US healthcare spending? A recent Health Affairs article from the National Health Expenditures Accounts Team summarizes the latest trends. In 2013 US health care spending increased 3.6 percent to $2.9 trillion, or $9,255 per person. The share of gross domestic product devoted to health care spending has remained at 17.4 percent…
Quotation of the Day
He disdained anyone who dismissed an issue as trivial. “Life is made up of a whole concentration of trivial matters,” he once said. “Certainly a computer is nothing but a huge concentration of trivial matters.” J. Presper Eckhert regarding his thoughts on building Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), widely considered to be the first computer.…
The downside of EMRs
…is the potential for data breaches. Experian’s 2015 industry data breach forecast notes the following: We expect healthcare breaches will increase — both due to potential economic gain and digitization of records. Increased movement to electronic medical records (EMRs), and the introduction of wearable technologies introduced millions of individuals into the healthcare system, and, in…