Tough to beat! Head #InsideTheOR with S. Christopher Malaisrie, MD, and witness open heart surgery by one of the best cardiology and heart surgery programs in the nation as ranked by US News and World Report.
Tag Archives: Healthcare
Healthcare: Mergers & Profit Strategies Force Many Rural And Smaller Hospitals To Close (Video)
In rural towns across the U.S. hospitals are in crisis. Since 2010, 121 rural hospitals have closed. And, the National Rural Health Association says more than one-third of all rural hospitals in the U.S. are at serious risk of shutting down.
But not all hospitals are losing money. A series of mergers and acquisitions that began in the 1990’s has created massive hospital groups. Many of these hospital consortiums are turning huge profits every year by offering high priced services to well insured patients.
High, Non-Transparent Prices And Aggressive Collection Tactics Erode Trust In Healthcare (JAMA)
From a JAMA Network online article (February 4, 2020):
High medical prices and billing practices may reduce public trust in the medical profession and can result in the avoidance of care. In a survey of 1000 patients, 64% reported that they delayed or neglected seeking medical care in the past year because of concern about high medical bills. The field of quality science in health care has developed measures of medical complications; however, there are no standardized metrics of billing quality.
A recent study found that only 53 of 101 hospitals were able to provide a price for standard coronary artery bypass graft surgery. Notably, among the hospitals that provided a price, the price ranged from approximately $44 000 and $448 000 and was not associated with quality of care as measured by risk-adjusted outcomes and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons composite quality score.
In the same way that there is wide variation in pricing, aggressive collection tactics also can be highly variable by institution. In a recent analysis, 36% (48/135) of hospitals in Virginia garnished wages of patients with unpaid medical bills, and 5 hospitals accounted for 4690 garnishment cases in 2017, representing 51% of all cases.7 In total, 20 054 lawsuits were filed in Virginia against patients for unpaid debt. For many hospitals that sue patients, legal action follows multiple attempts to contact patients through letters and calls, and some hospitals may offer to set up payment plans or even negotiate charges.
Healthcare Podcasts: “Cityblock” Seeks To Keep People Out Of Hospital
This week on Prognosis, we look at one startup that’s trying to redesign care for some of the most vulnerable patients, taking into account the complex realities of their lives. The company is trying to improve care for people and communities the medical system often fails – and it believes that fixing those failures will not only make people healthier, it will also save money.
In America, poverty is linked to shorter lifespans. The wealthiest 1% of Americans live more than a decade longer than the poorest 1%, and the longevity gap has expanded in recent years. The medical community is increasingly examining the role that poverty and difficult social circumstances play in illness. Some people are asking whether the health care system could do more to address the things that influence people’s health beyond their medical care.
Heathcare Podcasts: An Inside Look At Benefits & Costs Of Hospice (NPR)
According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, seven in 10 Americans say they would prefer to die at home. And that’s the direction the health care system is moving, too, hoping to avoid unnecessary and expensive treatment at the end of life.
Hospice allows a patient deemed to have fewer than six months to live to change the focus of their medical care — from the goal of curing disease to a new goal of using treatments and medicines to maintain comfort and quality of life. It is a form of palliative care, which also focuses on pain management, but can be provided while a patient continues to seek a cure or receive treatments to prolong life.
Medical Procedures: How “Gamma Knife” Surgery Treats Brain Tumors
It’s called gamma knife surgery, but there’s no cutting involved. It’s been used at Mayo Clinic for 30 years as an alternative to open brain surgery.
The patient’s head is held still during the procedure with a headframe, which also serves as a map for the radiation. Using 3D imaging — typically an MRI — as a guide, the gamma knife is targeted directly at the tumor. And with no hospital stay and minimal side effects, it’s a procedure that is efficient and can be lifesaving.
Digital Medicine: Apps For Smartphones, Machine Learning To Treat Kidney Disease (The Lancet)
From a The Lancet online article (January 18, 2020):
Smartphone app-based platforms for urine testing could improve adherence to albumin creatinine ratio (ACR) testing. One study showed screening of at-risk patients almost doubled with a home urine test kit that uses a smartphone camera to easily and accurately quantify ACR from a user-performed urine dipstick. If independently validated in a large, diverse population, this low-cost strategy could change the often dim trajectory for individuals with declining kidney function. 
In the outpatient setting, a Japanese team used machine learning and natural language processing to predict disease progression and need for dialysis over 6 months in patients with diabetic nephropathy. And while the increased risk of contrast-induced acute kidney injury has been long appreciated, a machine learning algorithm trained and tested on 3 million adults effectively quantified the degree of kidney injury on the basis of the volume of contrast used and individual patient-level characteristics.
Senior Healthcare: The Challenges Of Safely “Aging In Place” (Video)
The 65-and-older population is the fastest-growing age group in the world. In this video, Stony Brook experts discuss the challenges facing this burgeoning population and their caregivers, and the technology that can facilitate happy, healthy and safe aging.
Innovation In Aging: “Creating an Age-Friendly Public Health System”
From an Innovation In Aging online release:
Becoming an Age-Friendly Health System entails reliably acting on a set of four evidence-based elements of high-quality care and services, known as the “4Ms,” for all older adults. When implemented together, the 4Ms represent a broad shift to focus on the needs of older adults:
- (1) What Matters: Know and align care with each older adult’s specific health outcome goals and care preferences including, but not limited to, end-of-life care and across settings of care;
- (2) Medication: If medication is necessary, use Age-Friendly medication that does not interfere with What Matters to the older adult, Mobility, or Mentation across settings of care;
- (3) Mentation: Prevent, identify, treat, and manage dementia, depression, and delirium across settings of care; and
- (4) Mobility: Ensure that older adults move safely every day to maintain function and do What Matters
The Age-Friendly Health Systems movement, initiated in 2017, recognizes that an all-in, national response is needed to embrace the health and well-being of the growing older adult population. Like public health, health systems, including payers, hospitals, clinics, community-based organizations, nursing homes, and home health care, need to adopt a new way of thinking that replaces unwanted care and services with aligned interventions that respect older adults’ goals and preferences. Becoming an Age-Friendly Health System entails reliably acting on a set of four evidence-based elements of high-quality care and services, known as the “4Ms,” for all older adults.
Medical Technology: “Digital Health Trends” At CES 2020 Show (Podcast)
January 8, 2020 – Digital health is one of the hottest and fastest-growing tech categories, not just at CES but throughout the entire tech industry. Join us for a roundtable with media experts discussing health innovations at CES 2020, the growth potential for the health care market and more.
Guests Amy Roberts, Managing Editor, Reviewed Dana Wollman, Editor-In-Chief, Engadget Neil Batra, Principal—Life Sciences & Health Care Strategy, Deloitte
Boomers Daily 