Mainstreet.com lists hospital facts worth knowing: medication-error deaths climb 10 percent in July as new residents start, infections kill 99,000 people a year, bedsores are rising, 1.5 million Americans have faced medical identity theft, and bills are often negotiable.
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Healthcare
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Healthcare
Nearly 100 Arrested in $250 Million Medicare Fraud Operation
The Justice Department charged 94 people in Miami, Baton Rouge, Brooklyn and Detroit over more than $251 million in fraudulent Medicare claims. Prosecutors say the schemes used beneficiaries' ID numbers, with recruits paid $50 to $100 to visit clinics that did not exist.
Healthcare
Affordable Care Act Asks for Free Preventive Health Care
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says new Affordable Care Act rules will require new private plans to cover preventive care, citing 59 million adults without adequate immunization coverage and a study estimating screening, vaccines and counselling could save 100,000 lives a year.
Healthcare
Heart procedures put patients at risk of radiation exposure
Reviewing claims from nearly a million patients aged 18 to 64, a Journal of the American College of Cardiology study found one in 10 had a radiation-based heart procedure over three years. More than 3,000 exceeded 20 millisieverts a year, the limit set for radiation workers.
Healthcare
Medicare Online Report Card
Hospital Compare, a federal website, pools records from Medicare patients treated at more than 3,600 hospitals and reports general information, quality of care and payment and volume data, including process-of-care measures for heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, asthma and surgery.
Healthcare
1812 veterans at risk of getting HIV due to dirty dental equipment
The VA notified 1,812 veterans who had dental work at a St. Louis medical center between February 1 and March 11 that equipment was washed without the specified detergent, potentially exposing them to hepatitis and HIV. Of about 100 tested so far, none was infected.
Healthcare
15 % of Americans uninsured in 2009
National Health Interview Survey estimates put 46.3 million Americans, 15.4 percent, uninsured at the time of interview in 2009. Among adults 18 to 64 the uninsured share rose from 19.7 percent in 2008 to 21.1 percent, while private coverage fell from 68.1 to 65.8 percent.
Healthcare
The Doctor Won’t See You Now: New Training Helps Prescribers Cope With Pharma Over Promotion
Part of Pfizer's $430 million Neurontin settlement funded prescriber training, and 150 people from medical centers, boards and agencies pooled those efforts in Chicago. Many were borrowing drug reps' one-on-one techniques for their own teaching, as 'academic detailing.'
Healthcare
Are You At Risk for Vaccine Advertitus?
Pfizer radio ads urge women to see a nurse practitioner about fibromyalgia. The writer questions prescribing Lyrica, Cymbalta and Savella for simple pain, citing an FDA alert that pregabalin users report twice the suicidal thinking and suicides among Cymbalta users.
Healthcare
WellPoint Counters Reuters Report of Targeting Breast Cancer Patients
Reuters reported that WellPoint used a computer algorithm to flag women newly diagnosed with breast cancer for fraud investigations that ended in cancelled policies. The final health care law dropped a House provision letting such women seek outside review first.
Healthcare
Health Care Reform Bill vs Small Businesses
Under the health care reform bill, small businesses need not cover their employees but get tax credits and an insurance exchange if they choose to. The CBO found premiums for small firms will fall. From 2014, only firms above 50 full-time workers face a $2,000-per-worker assessment.
Healthcare
Health insurers invest in fast food chains
A study in the American Journal of Public Health found large health, disability and long-term care insurers hold nearly $2 billion in fast food stock, including $422.2 million by Northwestern Mutual, $406 million by ING and $366.5 million by Massachusetts Mutual.
Healthcare
Insurance companies reforming accounting practices to keep high profit
A Senate Commerce Committee report says some health insurers are reclassifying administrative costs as medical costs ahead of rules taking effect January 1, 2011 that require 80 to 85 percent of premiums to go to medical care, with rebates owed to buyers otherwise.
Healthcare
Health care reform bill and the uninsured
A question-and-answer explaining that the health insurance reform bill caps what individuals pay for coverage, offers income-based tax credits, bars insurers from refusing coverage over health status, and opens a high-risk pool for the uninsured until 2014.
Healthcare
US Maternal Death Rate on the Rise
Worldwide maternal deaths fell from 526,300 in 1980 to 342,900 in 2008, but The Lancet's analysis of 181 countries found the US rate rose 42%, from 12 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 17 in 2008. Canada and Denmark also recorded increases.
Healthcare
U.S. Hospitals Fail to Improve Patient Safety and Injure and Kill Thousands Every Day
A HealthGrades study counted nearly 1 million patient-safety incidents among Medicare patients from 2006 to 2008, tied to $8.9 billion in costs, with one in ten of those affected dying. Had every hospital matched the top 5 percent, 218,000 incidents and 22,000 deaths might have been avoided.
Healthcare
Health care reform bill and my current insurance
A question-and-answer piece drawn from White House material on how the health care reform law affects employer-sponsored insurance: premiums, keeping an existing plan, plainer plan language, a ban on lifetime limits, rebates, and coverage for adult children up to age 26.
Healthcare
Why Medical Authorities Went to Such Extremes to Silence Dr. Andrew Wakefield
Dr. Andrew Wakefield answers the criticism of his 1998 Lancet MMR paper and discusses the gut-brain connection he has investigated in autistic children, along with childhood vaccine safety. Mercola argues peer review can be distorted by the vaccine industry's financial stakes.
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