U.S. physicians are less likely than doctors in other countries to think that healthcare IT can improve diagnostic decisions, according to a survey of 3,700 doctors in eight countries. Additionally, only 47% of U.S. doctors report that healthcare technology has helped improve the quality of treatment decisions, compared to 61% of the other physicians interviewed. Only 45% think that technology leads to improved health outcomes for patients, against a survey average of 59%.
A new contract struck between Partners HealthCare System Inc. and Tufts Health Plan will help control health care costs in Massachusetts by limiting payment increases to Partners' hospitals and doctors to the rate of inflation, both sides said Wednesday. Partners, the state's largest hospital and physicians organization, tore up the last two years of its existing contract with the health insurer, replacing the pact with a new four-year agreement that, while still giving Partners more money each year, will lower Tufts' reimbursements to the medical care provider by about $105 million from what they would have been under the former rate structure.
Tougher laws and new regulations targeting the state's pain clinics and rogue doctors are having an unintended consequence on Florida hospitals: More and more people are turning to the emergency room for painkillers, including prescription drug addicts. Emergency department doctors and nurses now find themselves treating hostile patients who are verbally and physically abusive. Some of those pill-seekers even make threats against hospital staff if they don't receive the drugs they want.
A former executive at Pasadena's Huntington Hospital was sentenced Tuesday to three years in federal prison and ordered to pay $4.8 million in restitution for running an elaborate kickback scheme that scammed the hospital into paying for more than $3 million of work that was never done.
Federal oversight of prison healthcare in California is nearing an end, a judge said Tuesday, six years after he ruled that abysmal medical conditions were contributing to an inmate death every week. U.S. District Court Judge Thelton E. Henderson said Tuesday that healthcare in state lockups has improved significantly since he seized control of the system, a move that has cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
Poverty and unfavorable health insurance account for only a small portion of the gap in the number of white versus Hispanic or black children who end up with a burst appendix, according to a new study. Some previous research has explained the fact that black and Hispanic children are more likely to have their appendix rupture by pointing to signs of poor health care access, including being uninsured, having public assistance insurance or having a low socioeconomic status. But the latest report finds that the main reasons for these disparities "are anybody's guess," said the study's lead author.