Sixty seven percent of seniors want to access healthcare service from home, although 66 percent of seniors do not think current available technology is sufficient for them to do so, according to an Accenture survey of 354 US seniors, aged 65 and over who are receiving Medicare benefits. The survey was fielded between May and June 2014. Accenture pointed out that according to data from the US Census Bureau, 3.9 million Americans are turning 65 this year. The survey found that more than 66 percent of seniors prefer to use self-care technology to manage their health rather than managing health independently.
Anyone who has been in the hospital, either as a patient or a healthcare provider, is keenly aware that hospitals perform a lot of tests. It has even been suggested that some of those tests may not be necessary. Now a new study published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery sheds light on just how excessive some of this testing can be. Researchers analyzed records from 1,894 patients who had cardiac surgery at the Cleveland Clinic and calculated the frequency and total volume of blood drawn from their subjects. They wrote that they "were astonished by the extent of bloodletting" they discovered.
Experimental drugs and special care helped make Nina Pham Ebola free. But today she fears she may never escape the deadly disease. The 26-year-old nurse says she has nightmares, body aches and insomnia as a result of contracting the disease from a patient she cared for last fall at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. She says the hospital and its parent company, Texas Health Resources, failed her and her colleagues who cared for Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person in the United States diagnosed with Ebola.
Hospitals that treat many poor and uninsured patients were expected to face tough financial times in states that did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. That's because they would get less Medicare and Medicaid funding under the health-care law, while still having to provide high levels of charity care. But in some of the largest states that did not expand Medicaid, many "safety net" hospitals fared pretty well last year — better than in 2013 in many cases, according to their financial documents. Kaiser Health News looked at the performance of about a dozen such hospitals in Florida, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia and Kansas, which released their 2014 financial results.
The contract between Carolinas Healthcare System and UnitedHealthcare expired Saturday night, leaving thousands of Charlotte-area residents uncertain about where to get medical care and how their bills will be paid. UnitedHealthcare issued a statement that, effective Sunday, all Carolinas HealthCare facilities and physicians are "now out of network" for United Healthcare customers, including employees at Duke Energy, one of the Charlotte area's largest employers. "We understand and appreciate how disruptive it can be when a hospital or doctor stops participating in our network," said UnitedHealthCare spokeswoman Tracey Lempner.
Officials in several Republican states that balked at participating in President Obama's health care initiative are revisiting the issue amid mounting panic over a possible Supreme Court decision that would revoke federal insurance subsidies for millions of Americans. The discussions taking place in state capitals across the country are part of a flurry of planning and lobbying by officials, insurance and hospital executives and health care advocates to blunt the possible impact of a court ruling. The justices hear arguments about the matter this week. If the court sides with the plaintiffs, who argue that subsidies are not allowed in the 34 states that opted against setting up their own insurance marketplaces, the ruling could spark an immediate crisis.