For patients who visit an emergency room with chest pains, but who don't have an abnormal EKG or elevated troponin levels, a CT scan can send them home earlier than conventional diagnostic procedures, doctors reported Wednesday. The patients are exposed to higher levels of radiation and the cost is slightly higher, but those effects are offset somewhat by the increased peace of mind associated with leaving the hospital sooner, the team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The U.S. market for advanced patient monitoring systems has grown from $3.9 billion in 2007 to $8.9 billion in 2011 and is forecast to reach $20.9 billion by 2016, according to a study by Kalorama Information. Efforts to reduce costs in healthcare, avoid emergency room overcrowding, and prepare for a growing number of elderly patients in the years to come are a few of the drivers for the adoption of these systems. In Kalorama Information's recently published report, "Remote and Wireless Patient Monitoring Markets", researchers predict the U.S. healthcare system faces "a looming healthcare crisis of unseen proportions," and there will be fewer healthcare personnel and funds to address the industry's growing needs.
Despite the financial uncertainty hospitals find themselves in, nonprofit health systems in Portland continue to find ways to finance ambitious capital projects. Legacy Health is spending $245 million on the children's hospital project. Oregon Health & Science University has committed $92 million in institutional funding to building a new office tower on the South Waterfront. Kaiser Permanente has a $344 million hospital under construction in Hillsboro. Oregon hospital revenues haven't fully bounced back from the plunge they took during the depths of the recession. Since 2008, credit rating firms have been busy downgrading nonprofit hospitals, and the outlook for nonprofit hospitals this year remains negative.
Three gruesome deaths at the privately run South Florida State Hospital triggered an investigation that revealed concerns that employees were overmedicating patients and failed to call the state abuse hotline after a patient died in a scalding bathtub, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. State officials requested a review of the facility "in response to significant events in past several months," including the deaths. The 335-bed facility, located in Broward County, is operated by The GEO Group Inc., a Boca Raton-based firm that is one of the world's largest private operators of prisons and detention centers. Many of the patients are mentally ill and admitted against their will because they are considered a threat to themselves or others.
Declining physician reimbursement has resulted in more physicians looking for ways to enhance their income. And plastic surgery is one of the only fields of medicine that is shielded from insurance companies. So an increasing number of doctors are closing their traditional medical practices and opening cosmetic surgery centers. These physicians learn the basics of plastic surgery through weekend courses, shadowing other doctors and even online webinars.
President Barack Obama's healthcare law just got cheaper—to the tune of $84 billion over 11 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That's because the Supreme Court's June ruling on the law allowed states to opt out of a costly Medicaid expansion, and in a new report released Tuesday, CBO anticipates that some of them will do just that. As a result, about 3 million more people will remain uninsured, Capitol Hill's official bean counters said. Overall, the new estimate pegs the costs of the law's health insurance coverage provisions at $1.2 trillion over 11 years, a figure that is more than offset by new taxes and Medicare cuts.