A bill that would require Minnesota hospitals to meet national standards on nurse staffing appears headed for a roadblock in the Legislature. The chair of the House Health and Human Services Policy Committee says she doesn't intend to hold a hearing on the bill unless the Minnesota Nurses Association and the hospitals start getting closer to a compromise on the issue. The union is lobbying hard for the legislation because it says nurse staffing levels in some hospitals are too low and could put patients in danger.
On the morning of her doctor appointment, Andrea Pedersen had stopped at the gym to check her weight and blood pressure. She noted her measurements on her iPhone, and at the appointed time, she headed to a computer for a video chat with her physician. Altogether, she admits, it wasn't the typical prenatal visit. But it may be by the time her 7-month-old daughter, Anna, grows up. Pedersen, who lives in Rochester, was taking part in an experiment at the Mayo Clinic to test a new do-it-yourself model of prenatal care. And while it's not yet ready for prime time, experts say it's one more sign of how the pressure to reform health care, and rein in costs, is starting to transform modern medicine. The experiment is one of several taking place at Mayo's Center for Innovation, a breeding ground for new ideas.
An FAU program trains nurses and advises thousands of nursing homes across the country about ways to detect problems and treat patients without always resorting to the emergency room. Farther north, Orlando Health is using physician interventions, "tele-medicine" and even old-fashioned house calls to keep people out of hospitals. These Florida initiatives are tackling one of the biggest problems facing Congress and the nation: how to provide quality care at lower cost without raising taxes or cutting benefits.
Steven Brill's recent Time magazine cover story, "Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us," is an extraordinarily well-reported look at medical pricing, demonstrating that high health-care prices have little relationship to underlying cost. For many commentators, the much lower prices paid by Medicare suggests an obvious solution to our health-care problems — "Medicare for all." There's only one problem with this "obvious" solution: Medicare has been a primary driver of the explosion of health-care costs in the United States despite — and perhaps because of — the low prices it pays. Over the past decade, Medicare’s spending per beneficiary has risen at roughly the same rate as spending for privately insured patients. Medicare's supporters have a simple explanation: Americans are living longer, and this is driving up the program’s costs. But Medicare's own data say that a much more important factor is the growing intensity of use: more demand for care at every age.
Most large employers don't expect to send their full-time employees to government health exchanges for insurance during the next five years, but some retirees and part-time workers will end up there, a new survey has found. The outlook for corporate insurance in the long term is less certain. Only about 26 percent of large employers surveyed were very confident their company will offer healthcare benefits in 10 years. That is a slight increase from last year's 23 percent, but a sharp drop from 73 percent five years ago.About one-half of the people in the United States who have health insurance receive it from their employers.
As a whistleblower lawsuit against Florida Hospital continues its way through federal court here, the nonprofit hospital system repaid nearly $3 million it received from overbilling the government, said the whistleblowers' attorney, Marlan Wilbanks."This further proves the credibility of our case," said Wilbanks, who represents whistleblowers Amanda Dittman, a bill-coding and reimbursement-compliance officer, and Dr. Charlotte Elenberger, a radiologist. Both are former Florida Hospital workers. However, hospital spokeswoman Samantha O'Lenick said the repayment was based on findings from a third-party audit.