Since it began sending pharmacists into the rooms of patients with heart problems when they are being discharged, the Cleveland Clinic has seen a big drop in the number of patients who need to be readmitted. But it has proved hard for other Cleveland hospitals that serve many of the area's poor patients to achieve the same results. This month, the National Quality Forum began a two-year trial that adjusts Medicare's metrics to account for poorer patient populations. NQF is a not-for-profit advisory group that works with federal regulators on the penalty metrics.
After the insurance exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act first went live in late 2013, Lori Lomas started combing the website of Covered California on a hunt for good deals for her clients. Lomas is an agent at Feather Financial, in the Sierra Nevada town of Quincy, Calif.; she's been selling health policies in rural communities for more than 20 years. But in 2013, she noticed a troubling change that surprised her: For many clients, insurance options decreased. "I just started running quotes for people," Lomas says, "and began realizing that in [some] zip codes, the only thing that shows up is Anthem [Anthem Blue Cross]."
At a time of increasing scrutiny of procedures to open blocked heart arteries, cardiologists are turning to — and reaping huge payments from -- controversial techniques that relieve blockages in the arms and legs. Unlike heart procedures, which must be done in a hospital or outpatient facility, where oversight is typically more intense, the opening of the peripheral arteries and veins of the arms and legs can be done in a doctor's office. Medical experts are questioning the necessity of some of these treatments, and many believe the condition is more safely treated with drugs and exercise.
There's one fact that makes the measles virus really scary: it's one of the most infectious diseases known to man. A person with measles can cough in a room, leave, and — if you were unvaccinated — hours later, you could catch the virus from the droplets in the air that they left behind. No other virus can do that. If your parents were born before 1960, there's a good chance they suffered through a measles infection. They may have lived to tell about it, but they may have had friends who didn't. In the US, before a vaccine was introduced in 1963, there were four million measles cases with 48,000 hospitalizations and 500 deaths every year.
Health care administration educators are at a crossroads: the health care sector is rife with inefficiencies, erratic quality, unequal access, and sky-high costs, complex problems which call for innovative solutions. And yet, according to our content analysis of top U.S. health administration schools and a recent article in the Lancet, our educational systems focus their curricula on isolated, theoretical subjects, such as analytics and quantitative problem solving, rather than the team-oriented, practical problem-solving skills required for innovation. All too often, when graduates of these programs enter the workforce, they find themselves unequipped to meet the challenges for innovation of 21st century health care.
Maya Cargile is a healthy eighth grader, but four years ago she almost died after a battle with the flu led to sepsis. "Anything that could possibly be painful or could be wrong, was wrong," Cargile told CBS News. She had developed a fever of 104 and was lethargic. Her mother, Lisa Cargile, took her to the hospital. "She wasn't breathing on her own; her blood pressure dropped, and that was when she was had to be put on life support," Lisa Cargile told CBS News. At that point, doctors put her in a medically induced coma for three days.