In 1864, the year before the Civil War ended, a massive study was launched to quantify the bodies of Union soldiers. One key finding in what would become a 613-page report was that soldiers classified as "White" had a higher lung capacity than those labeled "Full Blacks" or "Mulattoes." The study relied on the spirometer—a medical instrument that measures lung capacity. This device was previously used by plantation physicians to show that black slaves had weaker lungs than white citizens. The Civil War study seemed to validate this view. As early as Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, in which he remarked on the dysfunction of the "pulmonary apparatus" of blacks, lungs were used as a marker of difference, a sign that black bodies were fit for the field and little else.
Doctors and hospitals won a reprieve Friday when the Obama administration officially delayed part of an electronic health records (EHR) program. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are now permitting healthcare providers to receive incentive payments this year even if they failed to adopt 2014-certified EHR software. The change means that doctors and hospitals will not be penalized if they fail to move into Stage 2 of the "Meaningful Use" program on time. The final rule, released Friday, also extended Stage 2 through 2016 and announced that Stage 3 would begin in 2017.
The price to remove a gall bladder or replace a hip has spiked more than 20 percent during the past five years, according to an analysis of data collected for NBC News. Surgery has bloomed into a $500 billion industry in the United States, where 80 to 100 million procedures are performed annually — a per-capita rate that's some 50 percent higher than in the European Union, said Dr. John Birkmeyer, a researcher and adjunct professor at the Dartmouth Institute and in the university's Community & Family Medicine program. The reason? Expensive yet safer technologies and hospital consolidations that create medical monopolies, according to doctors and researchers.
With insurance companies often paying doctors less for their services and with paperwork increasing, Dr. Gregory Yu was putting in longer workdays to squeeze in more patients. He figured there had to be a better way. So a few years ago he shifted a portion of his practice to a concierge model in which patients pay a monthly fee of $150 in exchange for more of his time — both in and out of the office. "It was more for my own personal longevity," said the La Cañada Flintridge internist, explaining why he made the switch. "
As a candidate in 2008, President Obama promised that health reform would reduce family premiums by up to $2,500, equivalent today to about a 15 percent reduction from the 2013 level. Though Mr. Obama might have been including the effects of premium subsidies in his calculation, a key premise of the Affordable Care Act is that competition among health insurers will drive premiums downward. So it's worth asking: How much savings can additional competition produce? The most direct answer to this question comes from analysis by Leemore Dafny and Christopher Ody of Northwestern University and Jonathan Gruber of M.I.T.
Brooks Memorial Hospital and its largest union reached a tentative contract last week, after five months of talks - but only after a federal mediator was brought in, there was picketing outside the Dunkirk facility and a union voted to authorize a strike. In Niagara County, the jobs of as many as 60 full-time employees are in jeopardy as Eastern Niagara Hospital ended inpatient care at its Newfane site as of Friday. And workers at long-term care facilities have faced layoffs, or uncertain futures, as nursing homes across the region have closed or switched from not-for-profit to private ownership.