The Southwest has the lowest rate of health insurance coverage in the United States, with 30% of non-elderly adults and 18% of children uninsured, according a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One expert theorized that the trend likely comes from a combination of factors, including state policy decisions and the fact that many jobs in the Southwest are service, construction or other jobs without good health benefits. New England has the largest proportion of its population covered, the study found.
WellPoint Inc. employees earned a bump in their annual bonuses this year thanks to its Member Health Index program, which monitors care for the health insurer's patients. WellPoint met or surpassed most goals for improvement in the first year of the program that measures whether more members were receiving recommended care in 20 clinical areas. WellPoint set goals for each clinical area and then decided that the numbers it saw had to increase at least 5% toward those goals for their employees to earn a higher bonus. The company hit or surpassed that targeted increase in 17 of the 20 areas.
An increasing number of Americans, many with health insurance, are delaying or forgoing medical care because of concern about cost, according to a report from the Center for Studying Health System Change. A 2007 survey of 18,000 people found that 20% of the respondents said that they had put off or gone without needed medical treatment at some point in the prior year, up from 14% in a 2003 survey. Of those who said in the 2007 survey they had put off care, 69% cited concern about cost as a reason.
Doctors have long recruited patients to help advertise, but it has remained an open question as to whether doctors pay or remunerate those smiling patients in violation of the rules of many physician associations. But it's now clear that doctors openly offer "thank you" rebates and discounts to patients who post videos of their breast augmentations, bright white teeth or nose jobs. Most payments or freebies to post on video-sharing sites are modest, but they have raised concerns among medical ethicists and consumer advocates.
About 234 million major surgeries are performed worldwide each year, and surgery rates are much higher in high-income countries than in low-income countries, according to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. The rate of major surgeries was 37 times higher in countries that spend more than $1,000 per person on healthcare than in countries that spend less than $100 per person on healthcare. Researchers also examined surgical safety, and found 7 million patients a year suffer complications following surgery. Half of these complications are likely preventable, said the study authors.
Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have joined with healthcare providers and insurers to lay out ground rules for protecting the privacy of online medical records. The guidelines are designed to reassure patients that they can enjoy the convenience of keeping their medical histories online without worrying that will open a door for outsiders to peruse the data without their knowledge. The "Connecting For Health" guidelines aim to give electronic PHRs at least the same level of protection already governing paper medical records, and also call for patients to be notified in a "timely way" if their medical information is released.