Hospital units specifically tailored to care for elderly patients could cut national health care costs by up to $6 billion annually, according to a new UCSF study. Researchers analyzed a pilot program that provides individualized care to 100,000 older patients in hospital units specifically designed for them in 200 hospitals nationwide. The findings were published this month in Health Affairs.If implemented nationwide, the program could save as much as $6 billion a year, or 1 percent of all Medicare costs, the researchers found.
"More than half the students," the professor wrote, "assumed that you were a man—despite your name. When asked why, many said that your writerly voice was unmistakably masculine: logical, confident, secure, sometimes sarcastic...and, above all, that you are an M.D." A classic study of preschoolers in 1979 showed that even young children "knew" that doctors were men and nurses were female. Perceptions, however, do lag behind reality, as these freshman English students demonstrated. When polled by their professor, they overwhelmingly considered doctors to be male.
Many parents have experienced the angst of a crying baby with an ear infection. Some 30 million medical visits in the U.S. alone are due to pediatric ear infections each year. A startup called CellScope has developed a device that could make such visits unnecessary. It connects to an iPhone and produces a view inside the ear magnified by a factor of 10. Users can capture and upload images to CellScope's Web platform. After adding notes about other symptoms, parents could ask their own doctor to conduct a remote exam. In most cases, that would be enough information for a prescription to be called in, says CellScope CEO Erik Douglas.
Earlier this week, a number of big health insurers, including two of the very largest—UnitedHealthcare and Humana—committed to offering some provisions of health reform. But those commitments would only apply to the 15 million or so consumers who buy their insurance directly from insurers or work for businesses that do so. Premiums for employer-based coverage have already gone up 8% to 9% annually in the past few years. And if the Supreme Court throws out the Affordable Care Act, there's a real risk that employees could see an "exponential jump" in premiums going forward, said Paul Keckley, executive director for Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.
With a ruling expected soon in the landmark U.S. healthcare case, Supreme Court watchers have scoured the landscape for clues about how the nine justices will vote. But they left one stone unturned. Make that 36. That is the number of law clerks who serve the justices, do their research, help draft their opinions and exert a not insignificant influence on their thinking. But reviews of the clerks' resumes and interviews with their former employers and colleagues —and yes, even their parents—shed light on their personalities and predilections and, in a few instances, their possible healthcare politics.
Many doctors-in-training with shaky Spanish skills are willing to discuss medical care with their patients in Spanish—but that may change after they are tested for fluency, a new study suggests. Researchers surveyed 76 pediatric residents and found 64 percent were willing to use Spanish with their patients. That number fell to 51 percent after they were evaluated on their Spanish skills—a difference due to fewer non-proficient speakers using the language after testing. Previous studies have shown residents often use their subpar second-language skills to talk with patients, the researchers wrote in the journal Pediatrics.