Geographic data firm Esri has put together a county-by-county map of which parts of the country have the greatest need for doctors right now. In the map below (click through for an interactive version), the dark blue counties have a very low need for physicians, with fewer than 1,000 people per doctor's office. If anything, this map illustrates how much where you live matters for how much healthcare you have access to. The 17,000 residents of Clark County, MS do not have a single primary care doctor in the area. Up in Manhattan there is one doctor for every 500 people.
Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding, among other topics, the individual mandate provision of Affordable Care Act. On Wednesday, at the Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights Department at Boston University School of Public Health, a panel of three legal scholars eflected on last week’s Supreme Court proceedings and explained what the arguments really were addressing.
A federal judge in Rockford has granted an injunction that will temporarily halt OSF HealthCare’s acquisition of Rockford Health System. The FTC challenged the acquisition last fall, saying the deal would be anticompetitive and could potentially raise prices on health care services for residents. But the health systems say they can address federal health care reform changes and diminishing state and federal reimbursements more efficiently as one entity.
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office is quietly circulating a proposal to more tightly regulate hospitals and doctors and the prices they are paid to care for patients. Providers and insurers would have to provide detailed price information to patients before they undergo a test or treatment, and the Division of Insurance and Department of Public Health would have new authority to limit the prices and market power of providers under Coakley’s proposal.
Four major Chicago teaching hospitals have landed on a list of institutions whose patients encounter substantially more medical complications than at the average hospital, according to data evaluated by the Medicare program. Medicare's first public effort to identify hospitals with patient-safety problems has pinpointed many prestigious teaching institutions around the nation, raising concerns about quality of care but also bolstering objections that the government's measurements are skewed.