Dr. Oliver Korshin practices ophthalmology three days a week in the same small office in east Anchorage, Alaska, he's had for three decades. Many of his patients have aged into their Medicare years right along with him. For his tiny practice, which employs just one part-time nurse, putting all his patients' medical records in an online database just doesn't make sense, Korshin says. It would cost too much to install and maintain — especially considering that he expects to retire in just a few years. But starting next year the federal government will penalize Korshin and other doctors for not using electronic health records; Medicare will withhold 1 percent of his payments.
For the many veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who don't have access to a trained mental health care team, connecting with such a team remotely by phone and video chats may help, a new study suggests. At least 500,000 veterans in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) system, or nearly 10 percent of the VHA population, were diagnosed with PTSD in 2012, the researchers write in JAMA Psychiatry. Previous studies have found that PTSD treatments delivered by interactive video are equivalent to therapy given in person, according to lead author John Fortney of the VA Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle, Washington.
When Dr. Jennifer Kemp's husband got advanced rectal cancer, she got an unexpected patient's-eye view of her profession. Her husband was having scans every three months, terrified each time that they might reveal bad news. Dr. Kemp, a Denver radiologist, would sit down with her husband's radiologist afterward. Even so, it could be an hour before a scan was ready to be viewed. "I couldn't believe how anxiety-provoking it was to wait even an hour," she said. "Sometimes he would get a scan I didn't feel comfortable interpreting and he had to spend 24 hours waiting — and I had connections," she added. "That was absolute torture."
There's a project in the neighborhood of Harlem in New York that has a through-the-looking-glass quality. An organization called City Health Works is trying to bring an African model of health care delivery to the United States. Usually it works the other way around. If City Health Works' approach is successful, it could help change the way chronic diseases are managed in poverty-stricken communities, where people suffer disproportionately from HIV/AIDS, obesity and diabetes. One of the people behind the experiment, which builds on the public-health technique of community outreach, is Manmeet Kaur. Kaur is a native New Yorker who grew up in Queens.
In a big year for deal making, the health care industry is a standout. Large drugmakers are buying and selling businesses to control costs and deploy surplus cash. A rising stock market, tax strategies and low interest rates are also fueling the mergers and acquisitions. It's all combining to make 2014 the most active year for health care deals in at least two decades. The industry has announced about $438 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions worldwide so far, about 14 percent of the $3.2 trillion total for all industries, according to data provider Dealogic. Overall, M&A is on track for its best year since 2007, the year before the financial crisis intensified.
People who bought Affordable Care Act health plans for 2014 but who don't go back to shop again for 2015 will automatically keep the plan they first chose, even if its price goes way up. Now the federal government is proposing that when people sign up, they should get a choice of defaults for future years: to stay in the same plan, or switch to a cheaper one in the same category if theirs gets too pricey. The proposed regulation, published Friday, suggests phasing in the additional choice, first giving states with their own exchanges the option of offering it.