Experts predict that the federal government has about a month to get Healthcare.gov in fighting shape if it wants to get 7 million people enrolled in its first year, Reuters reported on Monday. Users are still experiencing issues with the federal exchange, which puts enrollment numbers at risk and gives Republicans more reason to say the law should have been delayed. While state-run exchanges have been running relative smoothly and enrolling thousands, the federal government, which runs exchanges for 36 states, has declined to say how many individuals have enrolled in insurance plans. Anonymous sources in the Department of Health and Human Services told the Daily Mail that there were just 51,000 completed applications during the program's first week.
Elderly Miami residents on Medicare filled more prescriptions for drugs in 2010 than seniors elsewhere in the country, and they were more than twice as likely as residents in Rochester, Minn., to fill at least one prescription for medications that have been identified as high-risk for patients over age 65, such as skeletal muscle relaxants, long-acting benzodiazepines, and highly sedating antihistamines. These are two of the latest findings from the Dartmouth Atlas Project, which on Tuesday released a report on prescription drug use among seniors that showed, once again, Miami has by far the highest healthcare costs in the nation — with the average Medicare patient spending $4,738 on prescription drugs in 2010, more than any other region and well above the national average of $2,968.
Funding for most of a Bennington hospital's budget could be in jeopardy after an investigation found that two nurses failed to provide proper care for a patient who died in the emergency room. The hospital, Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, is moving quickly to correct the problems identified following the patient's death in hopes the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will keep the funding, which accounts for about 75 percent of the hospital's budget, officials said. "It's important for our hospital to be able to treat any patient who comes through the door and working with any provider in the area," hospital spokesman Kevin Robinson said Tuesday. "We will leave no stone unturned to be able to continue to participate in this program."
The political right has paralyzed government over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, on the grounds that the ACA represents an unacceptable government intrusion into what today is the province of private markets. But the premise is fundamentally untrue. Government's hand has long shaped and subsidized health-care markets, for example, in Medicare and Medicaid (which dominate how medical care is organized and delivered in America, even for care that falls outside their reach), or the requirement that hospitals treat urgent care needs of indigents.
A report out today by a coalition of medical and consumer groups concludes poor adherence to medications among patients with multiple chronic conditions has reached "crisis proportions" in the U.S. It leads to "unnecessary disease progression" and complications and too many emergency room visits, hospitalizations and avoidable hospital re-admissions, says the National Council on Patient Information and Education. "We see people again and again and again for conditions that are treatable," says Dr. Jim Bailey, an internist at a Memphis hospital's outpatient clinic. "Patients don't want to admit they can't afford their medications."
After languishing in the single digits for many years, hospital EHR adoption rates are dramatically increasing. A major driver is the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs, or the "Meaningful Use" program. A recent Health Affairs study suggested hospital participation in the program was lagging. In this post, we report the latest data, which paint a different picture — as of July 2013, two-thirds of hospitals have achieved Stage 1 Meaningful Use, and nearly all are engaged with the program in some way. The incentive programs were designed to support greater adoption and use of EHRs, with the ultimate goal of improving patient care and health system outcomes.