Using mobile devices to report "observations of daily living" (ODLs) can help improve healthcare, according to studies supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The five research teams involved in RWJF's Project HealthDesign found that when patients used technologies such as smartphone apps, sensors, iPods, and iPads to collect information from their daily lives and share it with providers, clinical care improved. Moreover, they found that providers were willing to use the data if it was properly filtered and presented. The Project HealthDesign teams enrolled patients all over the country in their studies.
Total knee replacement procedures rose 162 percent from 1991 to 2010 while the number of procedures to repair a previously implanted artificial knee joint, called revision, jumped 106 percent, according to research released in the Journal of the American Medical Association. About 600,000 total knee replacement procedures, done to relieve symptoms of severe knee arthritis, are performed each year in the U.S. costing about $9 billion annually, according to the research. About 60 percent of those procedures are paid for by Medicare, the federal government health program for the elderly and disabled, said Peter Cram, the lead study author.
People will learn their doctor has left a practice with little or no explanation, and without a forwarding address. Michael A. Cassidy, chairman of the health law practice group for the Downtown law firm Tucker Arensberg, represents more than 500 local physicians. He said most physician contracts now contain clauses that prohibit doctors from soliciting patients if they leave a practice. Contracts have become more restrictive, but that's not the only reason that more such incidents may occur. The competition between Highmark and UPMC for doctors, and healthcare overhaul that is steering doctors into larger systems may help make these situations more frequent.
For the second year in a row, the Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) has urged Congress to support the establishment of a national patient identity system to make it easier to exchange healthcare information between disparate facilities. This year, HIMSS is asking Congress to commission a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) so that the political branch can make informed choices. But HIMSS still has the same objective, said Richard M. Hodge, senior director of congressional affairs for the organization.
By establishing a health benefit exchange and expanding Medicaid coverage, Maryland is on a path to extend access to affordable healthcare to hundreds of thousands of individuals, families and small businesses. A key root cause of high health care spending in Maryland—and across the country—is a lack of balance in our healthcare system. The system has provided ample reimbursement for high-tech care for complicated illness while underpaying for the primary and preventive care needed to support people in health and wellness.
Under Massachusetts' new healthcare cost-control law, legislators are counting on physician assistants like Tuff as critical partners in the effort to curb medical spending, improve the coordination of treatment, and give patients easier access to basic care amid a shortage of primary care doctors. A little-known provision of the law, which Governor Deval Patrick signed in August, expands the role of physician assistants by requiring health plans to list them as primary care providers in directories and allow patients to choose a physician assistant as their provider. They still will work on teams with doctors, but they will have their own group of patients for whom they are primarily responsible. Nurse practitioners were given similar status in a 2008 state law.