The Obama administration has hired 40 percent more people to help with healthcare sign-ups in the final week ahead of the 2015 deadline for enrolling in health insurance through ObamaCare. A total of 14,000 people are running call centers across the country starting Monday, when prospective enrollees will have less than a week to meet the Feb. 15 deadline. Officials in charge of HealthCare.gov said they have been planning for a last-minute swell of sign-ups, warning that the wait times for call centers have continued to increase as the clock winds down.
Most parents of young children today never, in their own childhoods, witnessed siblings and friends fall ill with measles. Many doctors in the U.S. have never seen a case. Five decades of vaccination efforts virtually eliminated the virus from this country. The measles vaccine, which became widely available in the U.S. in 1963, has protected millions of children from illness and saved thousands of lives. But now many experts say the current measles outbreak -- which has so far sickened more than 150 people -- demonstrates what happens over time when the frightening realities of a contagious disease fade into history.
After a night shift at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Todd Ostlund would go home and switch off his phone ringer and anything else mimicking the many, many alarms a nurse hears while on duty. And still, on many nights, he'd be roused from sleep by a "beep, beep, beep" in his dreams. Medical device alarms play critical roles in a hospital — to signal trouble with a patient's vital signs or medical equipment, and to draw caregivers to the bedside in time to help. But too often, alarms have been nuisances — set off by patient movements that cause their pulse to spike briefly, or by a momentary kink in an IV line, or patients simply scratching their noses and bumping the blood oxygen monitors on their fingers.
The urgent care boom is heading toward a goal of reducing health care spending annually by $4.4 billion, according to a new report on the shift away from traditional emergency rooms. Urgent care centers have gained traction as many hospital executives seek savings under the Affordable Care Act. The centers offer a mixed bag of services – think somewhere between a primary care doctor and emergency room. The United Hospital Fund's report touched on a range of urgent care issues, including a lack of oversight and regulations. The New York City-based organization's report also outlined the financial benefits from an ongoing push to wean hospitals off revenues from emergency departments, which remain one of the most costly ways to deliver medicine.
Shorter shifts for medical residents don't appear to be making any big improvements in doctors' fatigue levels or in patient care, new research shows. The study found that although doctors weren't less tired during their shortest shifts, an adverse patient event was more likely to occur during a short shift. The results "question the rationale for shortening the exposure of the residents to the patients," said study leader Dr. Christopher Parshuram, an associate professor of pediatrics, critical care and health policy management and evaluation at the University of Toronto.
Insurers aren't required to encrypt consumers' data under a 1990s federal law that remains the foundation for health care privacy in the Internet age — an omission that seems striking in light of the major cyberattack against Anthem. Encryption uses mathematical formulas to scramble data, converting sensitive details coveted by intruders into gibberish. Anthem, the second-largest U.S. health insurer, has said the data stolen from a company database that stored information on 80 million people was not encrypted. The main federal health privacy law — the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA — encourages encryption, but doesn't require it.