Thirty-two groups were named Monday to test a new health-care model, called for in the health-care law and designed to improve care for seniors while reducing costs. The groups, which range from Boston-based Partners HealthCare, the largest health-care provider in Massachusetts, to the doctor-led HealthCare Partners of southern Nevada, were selected as the first Medicare accountable care organizations by the Department of Health and Human Services. The organizations are designed to save $1 billion over five years by promoting coordination between doctors and hospitals and ensuring that people with chronic conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure get the care they need to stay out of the hospital.
The Obama administration avoided a potentially brutal lobbying battle over the medical benefits insurers must cover under the U.S. health-care overhaul when it decided last week to hand the decision off to states. The Dec. 16 ruling, coming less than a year before the presidential elections, gives states the power to set coverage levels for the policies uninsured people will buy through regulated marketplaces, called exchanges, starting in 2014. Business groups will argue for a narrow set of benefits to save costs while consumer advocates push for more coverage. The decision shifts the debate to statehouses and away from the White House, and lets President Barack Obama say he’s giving governors and legislatures more flexibility within their own communities to confront rising medical costs and control changes brought about by the 2010 health-care law.
Riddle me this, what's the latest tale of daring-do to hit the comic book stands? Here's a hint: it doesn't feature masked avengers, or include earnest sidekicks. There are no costumes, nor secret lairs. But the hero in this story does have an alter ego. Or at least, an alias. What is it, you ask? Holy 1,900-page-legislation! It's the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. That's right, the latest graphic novel to hit book store shelves tells the story of the Affordable Care Act, and it's titled "Health Care Reform. What It Is. Why It's Necessary. How It Works." And its author isn't your typical comic book geek. No, author Jonathan Gruber is a geek of a different order: He is a health care economist.
Everybody makes mistakes. But far too few people take the opportunity to learn from them. We'd all be better people if we did. And for doctors, acknowledging errors could mean the difference between a patient's life or death. In a study where doctors were faced with a simulated medical emergency and had to choose from uncertain treatment options, a scenario requiring a certain amount of trial and error, doctors who paid more attention to their mistakes fared much better than those who focused on their treatment successes.
Generic drugmakers plan to work with distributors, wholesalers and others to create an advance warning system for medicines that are in short supply, the head of the U.S. generic industry's trade group said on Thursday. The private-sector system would supplement a notification system used by U.S. health officials to inform patients and others of looming supply problems for these life-saving medications, most of which are generic.
Hospitals are not required to offer or perform autopsies. Insurers don't pay for them. Some facilities and doctors shy away from them, fearing they may reveal malpractice. The downward trend is well-known ? it's been studied for years. What has not been appreciated, pathologists and public health officials say, are the far-reaching consequences for U.S. healthcare of minuscule autopsy rates. Diagnostic errors, which studies show are common, go undiscovered, allowing physicians to practice on other patients with a false sense of security.