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Reducing Unnecessary Blood Tests By Telling Doctors the Cost
Not every hospital patient needs to get routine blood tests every day, but that’s common practice, leading to wasted money and time. A new study finds that simply making physicians aware of the cost of regular blood tests cut the daily bill for the tests by as much as 27%.
Researchers from Brown University and the University of Miami started by monitoring the baseline daily per-patient cost for...
Reader Consult: Do Electronic Medical Records Need a Bottom-Up Approach?
Should electronic medical records be rolled out chiefly according to the needs of physicians and other providers?
That’s the question debated by two physicians in this week’s Annals of Internal Medicine. Anwar Hussain, a physician at UHS Hospitals in Johnson City, NY, argues the affirmative in
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A.M. Vitals: WellPoint Will Tie Payment to Quality
Paying for Quality: WellPoint’s Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in 14 states will tie hospital reimbursement increases to quality of care, as measured by a 51-indicator test, the WSJ reports. The assessment is based 55% on health outcomes, 35% on measures of patient safety and 10% on patient satisfaction; the company’s chief medical officer tells the paper that using the formula can save both WellPoint...
Gingrich on Health Care: Yes on Individual Mandate, No on GOP Medicare Overhaul
Newt Gingrich, now officially a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, is staking out some of his positions on the divisive issue of health-care overhaul.
As the WSJ reports, the former Speaker of the House dismissed the plan to rejigger Medicare put forth by the current GOP House majority as “right-wing social engineering,” while also endorsing the individual mandate to buy insurance...
AFL-CIO, a Forest Labs Shareholder, Wants Solomon Out as CEO
The WSJ recently wrote about the government’s efforts to bounce Howard Solomon from his seat as Forest Laboratories’ CEO as part of a drive to pin corporate wrongdoing on head honchos, even if they had no direct knowledge of a company’s bad behavior.
In Forest’s case, that was sales-related misconduct related to Celexa and Lexapro. The company made a plea deal last September, agreeing to pay...