Kaiser Health News recently reviewed Medicare data to examine the comparative costs of a patient episode of care—defined as covering three days prior to admission to 30 days post discharge—including comparing the national median to the average for U.S. News and World Report's "best hospitals" honor roll, which consists of AMCs. The average cost to Medicare for a patient in these AMCs turned out to be slightly less than the national median spending for all U.S. hospitals. The figures in fact were $17,808 for AMCs versus $17, 988 for the far larger national group of hospitals.
Opponents of President Barack Obama's healthcare law have been predicting dire consequences for seniors on Medicare ever since the legislation was signed last year. The warnings are mostly political spin, but there could be real problems if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act this month. The ACA, a cornerstone of President Obama's healthcare plan, would extend health insurance to an additional 23 million Americans by 2019. But it's run into significant roadblocks as opponents argue that key components are un-Constitutional.
U.S. regulators and the country's top cancer doctors urged Congress to help end the shortages of more than a hundred drugs, including those for deadly tumors. The House and Senate are working to merge bills passed last week that would require drugmakers to notify the Food and Drug Administration when they expect a disruption to production of medicines. The number of shortages have tripled since 2006 and include cisplatin for ovarian cancer and paclitaxel, a therapy given to women with breast cancer.
Marita Nash, environmental services director at Hunterdon Medical Center and her colleague Kathy Roye-Horn, Hunterdon's infection-prevention director, are on the front lines of one of the most critical battles in health care—keeping virulent hospital infections at bay. Besides increased diligence, the Hunterdon team is mobilizing new technologies, including bathing patient rooms with germ-killing ultraviolet light. Specialized computer software tracks new outbreaks of infection. And a new generation of powerful disinfectant products are used to kill even some of the most potent germs, especially Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, which is linked to some 14,000 U.S. deaths a year.
This deluge of do-less recommendations results from research into tests and procedures that have been arguably overused. You'd think these pronouncements would bring a sea change in the way patients are treated in this country. But my guess is that little will change. Many doctors, maybe most, will ignore these findings and keep doing what they have been doing all along. Why? Healthcare critics are quick to point to the profit motive. And it's true that gastroenterologists, radiologists, urologists and physicians of all stripes make money from procedures that may not be necessary. But the real obstacle is not money. It's the culture of doctors, and that will be very hard to change.
In some respects, physicians are technological trend setters. But within the physician community, there are sharp differences in technology adoption. A new study shows that in regard to Internet technologies, these differences are related to physician demographics rather than to professional variables such as specialty, practice setting, or the number of patients they see per week. Researchers associated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looked at physician use of seven Internet-related technologies: social networking websites, portable devices to access the Internet, email to communicate with patients, podcasts, widgets, RSS feeds, and blogging.