The Cost of an Ounce of Prevention
By Josh Trent “Have you ever been told you have a heart murmur?” a young doctor gently asked my friend, Ben. Ben’s mind reeled. Ben was in his early 30s, relatively young and healthy. But his father had died from a heart attack before age 50. And his mother had a heart problem. What did this question signal for him, he worried. “Um, ah, no, I haven’t,” Ben managed to murmur in reply. The doctor told Ben he wanted to get a sonogram to have a picture of Ben’s heart. He scribbled an order on a form and told Ben of a nearby cardiologist. Ben thanked the doctor and wrapped up...
Read MoreAlliance Between the Generations for Responsible Medicare Savings
The following post is by Jim Sabin, a Clinical Professor in the Departments of Population Medicine and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Ethics Program at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and a blogger at the website “Over 65.” Jim has been in healthcare for almost 50 years — as psychiatrist, medical director, teacher/researcher, consultant, leader of the ethics program at a not-for-profit health plan, and patient. There’s no way to address long term financial health in the U.S. without including Medicare savings in the mix. But political...
Read MoreWill it be misery or happiness for hospitals?
- Kristine Komives How do hospitals make money? – By spending less than they earn. But here is the situation that hospitals and health centers will be facing as health care reform legislation is implemented - there will be growing demand to eliminate wasteful spending, including excess care that would otherwise bring in revenue. In the last few days, Moody’s downgraded the outlook for non-profit hospitals and health centers due to decreases in volume and lower reimbursement. In 2009, many hospitals saw salary freezes, suspension of construction...
Read MoreDebating Price Transparency
Ever wonder how prices are set for healthcare services? If you’ve ever received a medical bill and wondered why it can’t be simpler to understand, then you’re asking the right question. While there are many reasons why healthcare costs are spiraling, one of them is that nobody really knows what anything costs. Providers get paid through a multiplicity of insurance-company contracts and billing schedules that change from patient to patient, depending on the type of health plan. Recently a New York Times article covered the issue of ‘balance billing’. A situation...
Read MoreCost containment and unfinished business
While the contentious healthcare reform bill enables access to health insurance for 32 million Americans, what about costs and efficient healthcare delivery? The often-heard criticism of the 10-year, 1 trillion healthcare reform plan is that it simply does not do enough to rein in the cost of treatments. According to a government report released in February this year, healthcare spending grew to a record of 17.3 % of the GDP in 2009, $ 134 billion more than 2008, marking the largest one-year jump in its share of the economy since the government started keeping such records half a century...
Read More
Last Tweets
Recent Comments