Allergist/immunologist and Dallas Morning News columnist Steve Cole contends that while there are myriad factors involved in the rising costs of delivering quality care, the primary reason is the healthcare providers themselves.
The damage that the human body can survive these days is as awesome as it is horrible: crushing, burning, bombing, a burst blood vessel in the brain, a ruptured colon, a massive heart attack, rampaging infection. These conditions had once been uniformly fatal. Now survival is commonplace, and a large part of the credit goes to the irreplaceable component of medicine known as intensive care.
Philadelphia City Councilman Brian J. O'Neill said that Fox Chase Cancer Center's planned $800 million, 25-year expansion was not threatened by delays that have pushed final passage of needed legislation into 2008.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has announced healthcare professionals should defer giving most children the Hib vaccine booster shot because of a vaccine shortage.
A study has found that doctors who specialize in the general care of hospital patients, or hospitalists, reduce the average hospital stay by 12 percent. The study also found, however, that hospitalists only modestly lower treatment costs.