For breaking news and analysis throughout the day, visit HealthLeadersMedia.com or add the RSS Feed of our Daily News & Analysis.
By: John Commins, for HealthLeaders Media, July 9, 2009
The American Hospital Association and other large hospital groups have made a "quid pro quo" deal with the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress to support healthcare reform in exchange for legislation that would prove "devastating" for physician-owned hospitals, the industry trade group Physician Hospitals of America claims.
By: Cheryl Clark, for HealthLeaders Media, July 9, 2009
The partnership between the American Medical Association and Sermo, the online physician social-networking site, is now in tatters, with such nasty invective it now seems way past divorce.
By: Janice Simmons, for HealthLeaders Media, July 10, 2009
A House healthcare reform bill that appeared to be on a fast track this week for release by Friday hit a yellow flag Thursday night. In part, the Blue Dog Coalition—a group of 52 moderate to conservative Democrats—had called for changes in the legislation, saying that it lacked "a number of elements" to fix what was not working in the current healthcare system.
By: Janice Simmons, for HealthLeaders Media, July 9, 2009
Hospital readmission rates that occur within 30 days after discharge for Medicare patients with heart attacks, heart failure, or pneumonia are now available for viewing for the first time on the Hospital Compare Web site.
By: Cheryl Clark, for HealthLeaders Media, July 10, 2009
Americans, and specifically taxpayers, paid nearly double in costs of hospitalizing obese children between 1999 and 2005, with almost twice as many such children requiring hospital care, according to a new report. The authors don't know exactly why, since the prevalence of childhood obesity did not change. However, they speculate that physicians may be more frequently listing obesity as a primary or secondary reason for admission. Another possible reason is that children are becoming even more obese and for longer periods of time, giving disease processes much more time to cause damage.
By: Karen M. Cheung, July 10, 2009
If you were to have needed CPR, the best place you could be is in a hospital, right? Not exactly. A new study found that few people survive cardiac arrest after CPR, even in the hospital. Out of the nearly half of a million (433,985) studied patients who underwent in-hospital CPR, less than one-fifth of them (18%) survived long enough to be discharged, according to the study.
By: Elyas Bakhtiari, for HealthLeaders Media, July 9, 2009
The reimbursement redistribution from specialists to primary care physicians that has been a long time coming may have begun last week.
By: Janice Simmons, for HealthLeaders Media, July 9, 2009
In the great debate about cutting costs through health reform, maybe it's time to consider how to do it through palliative care.