The U.S. government on Thursday announced a cancer care initiative for Medicare beneficiaries that will link payments to oncology practices to quality of care and patient outcomes as a means of improving treatments and cutting costs. The initiative by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as part of the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare, comes as expensive new cancer treatments put an increasing strain on state and federal healthcare budgets. "We aim to provide Medicare beneficiaries struggling with cancer with high-quality care around the clock and to reward doctors for the value, not volume, of care they provide," Dr. Patrick Conway, the chief medical officer for CMS, said in a statement.
Doctors and academics who advise the U.S. on vaccines are considering recommending physicians be compensated for counseling people on the importance of getting shots for their children, even if the parents ultimately choose not to vaccinate. Draft recommendations presented Wednesday at a meeting of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee in Washington would also suggest establishing a minimum coverage goal for doctors, encouraging them to get more patients inoculated. The proposals, if adopted, could help doctors and public-health officials bridge a divide with parents who are worried that it's unsafe for their children to follow government guidelines for vaccines.
We know that wasteful spending is a huge problem in health care. Every year, the United States spends $765 billion annually (about one third of our overall health care dollars) on things that do not make Americans any healthier. This is both a huge problem, and opportunity. If we could make a dent in unnecessary wasteful spending, cut it in half or even a quarter, it would be a huge reduction in health care costs. And that could happen without harming Americans: we'd be eliminating the care that, by definition, isn't needed.
Dr. Gregory Sampognaro is one of the busiest interventional cardiologists in the United States, clearing out clogged coronary arteries in hundreds of patients every year. Sampognaro ranked 17th in the U.S. in 2012 in the number of these procedures, according to a U.S. News & World Report analysis of Medicare data. What makes these numbers noteworthy is that Sampognaro works not in a medical mecca like New York or Chicago but in Monroe, Louisiana, a fading Mississippi-delta agricultural community of 54,000 in one of the poorest congressional districts in the U.S. Sampognaro is one of dozens of cardiologists in communities outside major metro areas who are performing catheterization procedures – such as diagnostic angiograms and artery-clearing angioplasties – at higher rates than doctors working at big city hospitals that serve as major cardiac referral centers.
President Obama announced on Wednesday that the United States was withdrawing almost all of its troops from the fight against Ebola in West Africa, but he said the world needed to remain vigilant as it sought to eradicate the deadly disease. "While our troops are coming home, America's work is not done," Mr. Obama told an audience that included six Ebola survivors. "Our mission is not complete. Today we move into the next phase." The president said that civilian employees of various government agencies, along with American volunteers and about 100 members of the military, would remain in West Africa as the effort moved from containment of the virus to eradication.
Mobile stroke units debuted in two U.S. cities during the past year, and already they are saving critical minutes when it comes to treating stroke patients, according to a pair of studies released Wednesday. The mobile units, each of which resemble an ordinary ambulance and cost about $1 million, are essentially specialized emergency rooms on wheels. They include unique equipment, such as a portable CT scanner to help determine what type of stroke a patient is experiencing and how best to treat it. They also include lab testing equipment and clot-busting drugs that can greatly improve the prognosis for patients who receive them soon after the onset of symptoms.