The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) wants to better define the "essential benefits" that non-grandfathered health plans participating in the state health insurance exchanges must offer. Under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, all of these insurance plans must offer an essential benefits package that includes benefits in specific categories. But in December 2011, HHS told the states that they could determine what those benefits would be by using a "benchmark" plan in their state in one of four categories. If a state doesn't do so, HHS said, it intends to propose that the default benchmark plan be the largest plan by enrollment in the small-group insurance market.
In some respects, physicians are technological trend setters. But within the physician community, there are sharp differences in technology adoption. A new study shows that in regard to Internet technologies, these differences are related to physician demographics rather than to professional variables such as specialty, practice setting, or the number of patients they see per week. Researchers associated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looked at physician use of seven Internet-related technologies: social networking websites, portable devices to access the Internet, email to communicate with patients, podcasts, widgets, RSS feeds, and blogging.
The new radio spectrum, approved last month, will be used for Medical Body Area Networks (MBANs)—low-power wideband networks consisting of multiple body-worn sensors that transmit a variety of patient data to a control device. The devices can be attached to a patient in a hospital or post-care settings for ongoing evaluation. The approval also opens up a whole new industry of home monitoring devices for chronically-ill people. For example, 75% of healthcare costs are related to the treatment of chronic conditions, according to Lynne Dunbrack, an analyst with market research firm IDC Health Insights.
In some cases, hospital patients may get a test or treatment intended for someone else because the doctor mistakenly put an order in the wrong electronic chart. In 2009, a quality-improvement program at Children's Hospital Colorado found that such misplaced orders were the second-most common reason that patients received care not meant for them. To help cut those types of errors, the hospital changed its computer system so that each order for a test or treatment triggered an "order verification screen," which included a photo of the child in question. And the move seems to have paid off, Hyman's team reports in the journal Pediatrics.
Years after most people switched from pagers to cell phones, doctors kept beepers at their sides because of poor cell reception in hospitals and fears that the devices would interfere with sensitive medical equipment. But those issues have now been resolved, according to Dr. Dan Shine, who leads the internal medicine service at NYU Langone Medical Center. The hospital is currently piloting a new smart phone program, hoping to eventually pull the plug on pagers for good. It issued a dozen iPhones to medical staff in its Emergency Department late last month after successfully incorporating 40 iPhones into Shine's internal medicine team eight months ago.
U.S. House Republicans are proposing to trim health insurance subsidies for low- and middle-income taxpayers to pay for a bill sponsored by Minnesota Republican Erik Paulsen that would repeal a new tax on medical device makers under President Obama's healthcare overhaul. The $43.9 billion plan would "recapture" overpayments under a new health insurance tax credit to offset the estimated $29 billion in revenue that would be lost over the next decade by repealing the medical device tax. The repeal of that tax is a top priority for Minnesota's large medical technology industry.