Right now, we simply don't have enough doctors to deliver high-quality primary care. Add to this the 25 million uninsured Americans who will have access to care in January when the Affordable Care Act goes into effect and we have the makings of a disaster. Medical schools across the country are doing an exceptionally poor job of addressing this shortage. Their press releases tout large numbers of medical students going into residencies that produce primary care doctors, yet these numbers are grossly misleading.
A state judge has ordered Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn to keep up its level of staffing after complaints by hospital workers that the State University of New York was allowing it to wither away even as officials publicly claimed they were doing everything possible to keep it open. After a hearing in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn Wednesday, the judge, Johnny Lee Baynes, signed an order saying the hospital, in Cobble Hill, should maintain staffing on par with what it was before SUNY Downstate Medical Center, which operates it, first moved to close it earlier this year.
New software that takes a patient's height and weight into account can reduce radiation exposure from CT scans by as much as 37 percent, according to new research. Doctors at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center developed the software that they say can be used for children and adults. The results of their research were published yesterday in the journal Radiology. The software helps administer safer, more consistent doses, said Dr. David Larson, radiology quality and safety director at the medical center and principal creator of the technology.
People who think they didn't get sick from a nationwide meningitis outbreak caused by contaminated steroid injections used to treat back pain may want to think again. Doctors at hospitals in Michigan did MRI scans of people who had been given tainted injections but didn't report symptoms of meningitis afterwards. About 20 percent of the 172 people tested had suspicious-looking MRIs, and 17 ended up needing surgery to treat fungal infections in or around the spine. The patients had gotten steroid injections about three months before the MRI, in mid to late 2012.
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Shares of U.S. hospital operators have been on a tear this year, on average posting triple the gains of the broader stock market, as investors tallied up the benefits of President Barack Obama's healthcare reform. While some on Wall Street have held back amid signs of trouble as U.S. states prepare to implement the reform law, long-term investors still see more reward than risk on the horizon for hospital stocks. They expect company earnings to strengthen as more Americans gain insurance coverage and hospitals lose less money treating the uninsured. The reform law has spurred consolidation among hospitals, and further merger activity could lift valuations.
If doctors and patients used prescription drugs more wisely, they could save the U.S. health care system at least $213 billion a year, by reducing medication overuse, underuse and other flaws in care that cause complications and longer, more-expensive treatments, researchers conclude. The new findings by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics improve on numerous prior efforts to quantify the dollars wasted on health care. Numerous experts previously have estimated that tens of billions, perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars, could be better used each year to improve patient care and outcomes and to slow down spending by government health programs, insurers and consumers.