Health information technology won't create the kind of cost savings predicted in a 2005 RAND Corp. study until the technology is far more widespread and is used to its full potential, a pair of RAND researchers conclude in a new Health Affairs report. The earlier RAND report, authored by Richard Hillestad and his colleagues, predicted that the potential efficiency and safety improvements made possible by health IT could save the U.S. healthcare system $81 billion a year. Since 2005, annual health spending has soared from $2 billion to $2.8 trillion, yet quality and efficiency have improved only marginally, despite an increase in health IT adoption, note researchers Arthur L. Kellerman and Spencer S. Jones in the new paper.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo will announce in his State of the State Message this week that every hospital in New York must adopt aggressive procedures for identifying sepsis in patients, including the use of a countdown clock to begin treatment within an hour of spotting it, a state official said. The new steps could save 5,000 to 8,000 lives annually, state health officials say, and reduce the long-term costs of the condition.
More than 80 percent of Medicare providers will face penalties for failing to meet quality thresholds if current performance trends continue, according to a new study. The Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute found Tuesday that fewer than one in five Medicare providers meet the program's Physician Quality Report System (PQRS) standards and are eligible for related bonus payments.
Patients entering church-affiliated nonprofit homes were prescribed drugs roughly as often as those entering profit-making "proprietary" institutions. But patients in proprietary homes received, on average, more than four times the dose of patients at nonprofits. Writing about his colleagues' research in his 1988 book "The Nonprofit Economy," the economist Burton Weisbrod provided a straightforward explanation: "differences in the pursuit of profit." Sedatives are cheap, Mr. Weisbrod noted. "Less expensive than, say, giving special attention to more active patients who need to be kept busy." This behavior was hardly surprising. Hospitals run for profit are also less likely than nonprofit and government-run institutions to offer services like home health care and psychiatric emergency care, which are not as profitable as open-heart surgery.
octors often cave in to patients' requests for brand-name prescription drugs even when generic versions are available, a new study suggests—a tendency that adds billions in costs for patients and the health system. "This is, by definition, a wasteful expense," said the report's lead author, Eric Campbell, from Harvard Medical School in Boston. "Doctors have the professional responsibility not to waste scarce medical resources," he told Reuters Health. "We have to educate doctors and patients about how wasteful this practice is."
The Alliance area in will soon have another hospital. HCA North Texas is building a new $71 million hospital near Interstate-35W and North Tarrant Parkway. Currently ER at Alliance, an existing freestanding emergency room, is the only HCA facility in the area. The yet to be named four-story acute care hospital will be attached to the ER at Alliance building. HCA administrators say the new hospital will meet the growing needs of the rapidly growing Alliance area.