Tuesday, March 26, 2013

ASC

Ambulatory Surgery Centers cut into hospital profits.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Fee For Service

Its far from dead, even if many want it to be. Here is a nice review of the current state of affairs with links.

Doc Watson

Escape Fire is a CNN documentary on the healthcare sector. An interesting discussion starter.  Maybe one proposal for lowering costs is hiring robots. IBM is training Watson to perform diagnostic work formerly the sole domain of MDs.  

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Misc Health Notes

Some more links for class:

1. The variance in the raet of caesarean section births can ot be explained by medical necessity due to high risk births. From a low of 7% to 70% the variance must in part be a function of other factos such as
Professor Kozhimannil said she suspected that the vast patchwork of health management techniques was driving the variation, including how patients are admitted, how their labor is managed and how hospitals and clinicians are paid for the work.
2. Some facts about doctors
...new M.D.s per senior fell by about a third over the last three decades...and New male M.D.s per person are down by over 45%.
3. Doctors don't always share the risks of of screening with their patients.

4. Nursing homes for or not for profit? Which provide better care? Non-profits for short term stays.

5. Medical Malpractice. The probability of having a claim filed against you doesn't appear to be correlated with size of the eventual payout.

6. Pharma promotion. It might not all be bad, but it definitely leads to increased expenditures, some of which might be overtreatment or misuse.

7. Its not a surprise most docs hate electronic medical records. They don't see an ROI.