Nearly 12 million Medicare beneficiaries received at least one prescription for an opioid painkiller last year at a cost of $4.1 billion, according to a federal report that shows how common the addictive drugs are in many older Americans’ medicine cabinets. With an overdose epidemic worsening, nearly one-third of Medicare beneficiaries received at least one prescription for commonly abused opioids such as OxyContin and fentanyl in 2015.
U.S. hospitals may be getting paid for more of the care they actually provide thanks to the Affordable Care Act, if research from Michigan reflects the situation around the country. While the study didn't look directly at hospital finances, researchers found that the proportion of uninsured adults discharged from Michigan hospitals fell after public insurance options expanded in 2014.
Medical centers are hiring trained chefs, upgrading their menus, and offering room service-style (sometimes called hotel-style) dining in hopes of hastening the healing process and raising patient satisfaction rates. Hospitals hope those higher patient satisfaction rates influence consumers shopping around for a place to have a baby or get elective surgery.
For the tidy sum of $2,000, terminally ill Californians can now pay a doctor to help them commit suicide. Dr. Lonny Shavelson, who heads Bay Area End of Life Options, said he charges $200 for an initial evaluation and $1,800 in other fees to help patients kill themselves. The medical practice began offering the service Thursday, after a law permitting physician-assisted suicide officially went into effect.
The CDC analyzed outbreaks it had investigated from 2000 to 2014 that involved 415 cases, including 65 deaths. Most of the outbreaks were in buildings with large or complex water systems, such as hotels, hospitals and long-term-care facilities. The report only looked at outbreaks associated with buildings, but the disease is also found on cruise ships. About half of outbreaks examined were the result of a single failure, such as a broken disinfection system or human error.
Whites were still the only racial group in which a majority of people with severe psychological distress get treatment. They were also the only group whose access to mental health services grew by a statistically significant amount, from near 50 percent to about 55 percent, after the federal law was implemented, according to research findings published Monday in Health Affairs.