Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
PwC predicts the top trends in Healthcare for 2014. Rethinking roles. Fiscal pressures, sweeping regulatory changes under the Affordable Care Act, and an industry-wide shift to consumerism have given rise to a new health economy. To succeed, some healthcare organizations are reinventing themselves. Insurers are acquiring provider groups. Providers are entering the insurance business. Retailers…
Medicare is cutting reimbursement to hospitals. Austin Frakt (HSR 2013) gives some highlights findings from a CMS report: [The ACA] will permanently reduce the Medicare payments hospitals would otherwise receive. Its ‘productivity adjustment’ will scale payments downward by the average rate at which private nonfarm businesses’ productivity increases. That rate has been estimated to be…
Michael Stack presents this year’s very first Cav, with posts from risky places for cancer treatment to medical child abuse (a term that’s new to me).
Does Medicaid decrease ER visits? Why use flow restrictors? Effect of competition on price and quality? January is Glaucoma awareness month. Big Healthcare.
The answer is likely yes, but the result may be simply due to a placebo effect, albeit a strong one. A new analysis has found that both real and sham acupuncture treatments may help alleviate side effects of drugs commonly used to treat breast cancer. Breast cancer patients who take a type of drug called…
The Dartmouth Atlas released a new report describing how end-of-life cancer care is changing over time. Their analysis uses data from a 20 percent sample of all Medicare beneficiaries who died between the ages of 66 and 99 years during 2010, who had cancer diagnosis with a poor prognosis. The authors find that: Deaths in…
Lonely? Price elasticity of beer. Which ERs have the longest waits? The rise of AFib. Deadlines.
Due to its recent economic woes, Spain has imposed a number of austerity measures including significant cuts to social services and health care. The Economist reports that “expenditure was reduced by 13.7% in 2012 and by 16.2% in 2013 (including social services). Some regions imposed additional cuts as high as 10%.” Cuts to health care…
The Atlantic has an interesting article about recent efforts to create a flu vaccine that protects patients against influenza for decades, or even their entire lifetime. Currently, the flu vaccine helps the body produce antibodies that attack influenza surface proteins. The problem is that the flu is quick learner; it readily mutates ts surface proteins…
The Washington Post reports that: President Obama has enrolled in the federal health-care insurance exchanges, selecting a bronze-tiered insuranceplan on the D.C. marketplace. Does Obama really believe the exchange plans are better than his current plans? Of course not. He did not put his wife, or children on the exchange plan. This PR stunt will…