When Linda Hippolyte first got into nursing, she thought everyone at her hospital was paid based on their experience and education. But when she got a peek at other nurses' salaries at Parkview Community Hospital in Riverside, she was in for a surprise. "You could really see the difference," she said, noting that male nurses seemed to be making more. "Why was this person who happens to be male making more than this person who is female, with the same experience?" For nurses, as for nearly everyone else in the U.S. workforce today, it pays to be a man.
Early concurrent palliative care in patients with advanced cancer had a significantly beneficial effect on 1-year survival, even for patients living in a remote rural setting, according to results from the ENABLE trial.
Nearly all emergency medicine physicians responding to a survey said that at least some of the advanced imaging studies they ordered were medically unnecessary, reported researchers.
A massive expansion of insurance programs like Medicaid and a drop in emergency room visits saved hospitals at least $7.4 billion over the last year, the Obama administration announced Monday. With millions more people covered under ObamaCare last year, hospitals faced fewer bills from patients who lacked insurance and were unable to pay. Hospitals also saw fewer emergency room visits, which rack up far higher costs and often leave hospitals with the tab. The costs of those services — known as uncompensated care — dropped by one-fifth nationwide in 2014, according to a government report released Monday.
Early evidence suggests that the tax credit subsidies at the core of President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law likely helped expand U.S. health insurance coverage last year, Congress's non-partisan research arm said on Monday. The subsidies - which can be paid by the federal government to insurers in advance to lower monthly insurance premiums - significantly reduced the premium costs, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report. "Surveys GAO identified estimated that the uninsured rate declined significantly among households with incomes eligible for the APTC (Advanced Premium Tax Credit)," the GAO said.
To hear some hospital executives tell it, they have to make up payment shortfalls from Medicaid and Medicare by charging higher prices to privately insured patients. How else could a hospital stay afloat if it didn't? But this logic is flawed. Study after study in recent years has cast doubt on the idea that hospitals increase prices to privately insured patients because the government lowers reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid. Indeed, one recent study found that from 1995 to 2009, a 10 percent reduction in Medicare payments was associated with a nearly 8 percent reduction in private prices.