Florida officials are appealing a federal judge's ruling striking down a Florida law that restricted doctors from talking with patients about gun ownership. Gov. Rick Scott announced the appeal Monday. U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke ruled earlier this month in the case known as "Docs vs. Glocks." Cooke agreed with physicians who contended the law violates free speech rights. The state will take its case to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Scott says he believes the law is constitutional and will continue to defend it.
For more than a year, top officials within the New York state health department refused to acknowledge or share the recommendations of a patient-safety advisory committee that was created 12 years ago under a mandate designed to stem hospital errors, publicize doctors' practice histories and prevent medical deaths, according to key members of the committee. State officials deny that assertion. Still, internal agency records obtained by the Times Union raise questions about whether state officials declined to act on a 2011 report that was submitted in December 2010 by a consortium of physicians and pharmacists who, for more than a decade, have made recommendations for improving patient safety.
The public, though, seems a little doubtful about pronouncements that Americans are over-tested and over-treated, and it's easy to see why. Our very nature tells us that if there's a bad thing in us like cancer, we want it out. Also, insurance companies and the government have been warning that runaway increases in medical costs are unsustainable. This makes patients worry that important medical tests and treatments will be withheld for financial rather than health considerations. What many people fail to realize is that some unnecessary tests and treatments are currently being ordered for a different financial reason: in order to earn doctors money.
IBM has announced that its Curam Social Program Management platform will be used to verify the eligibility of approximately 1.2 million Minnesotans who are expected to apply for health coverage through the state's health insurance exchanges (HIX). Earlier this month, Minnesota awarded Maximus a prime contract worth $41 million to create the state's new HIX website. IBM will work as a subcontractor to Maximus on the project. Like many state health insurance exchanges in development across the country, Minnesota's will rely on several technology vendors. HIXes require a robust health IT infrastructure to support their secure websites.
Legislative leaders announced a compromise Monday to tame soaring healthcare costs that would make Massachusetts the first state to try to limit how much providers and insurers could spend on medical care. The plan—likely to be voted on by the House and Senate on Tuesday, the final scheduled day for passing legislation—would allow healthcare spending to grow no faster than the state economy overall through 2017. For the following five years, spending would slow further, to half a percentage point below the growth of the state's economy, although officials would have the power under certain circumstances to soften the target. If the House and Senate approve the legislation on Tuesday, Governor Deval Patrick would have 10 days to act on the bill.
As hospitals cut costs to survive ever-increasing financial pressures, nurses argue that inadequate staffing harms patients. Now members of a University of Pennsylvania research team say they have figured out a key reason for that. The study, which appears Monday in the American Journal of Infection Control, is believed to be the first to examine why staffing matters. It also is among the first to measure the potential harm. If hospitals could reduce their proportion of burned-out nurses to 10 percent from the 30 percent that is typical, according to the study, they would prevent 4,160 cases a year of the two most-common hospital-acquired infections statewide and save $41 million.