Why Are Good Hospitals Good?
Do high volume providers get better results because they perform procedures more often? Or do they perform procedures more often because of referrals from doctors who know they are good…
Insurance Coverage Denials: Private versus Public
The people behind the coming denials: The people behind the coming denials: has fewer than twenty physicians on its coverage staff and fewer than forty total clinicians once pharmacists, nurses,…
Osteoarthritis and Obesity Can Shave 3.5 Years of Healthy Life
Harvard Medical School conducted a study that showed that close to 40% of elderly Americans are obese or have osteoarthritis of the knee, or both, which, on average, eliminates…
How Increasing Medicare Age of Eligibility Saves Under Reform
One of the stopgaps in federal spending on healthcare proposed by the GOP-led House this session is the ongoing discussion of entitlement spending and the effect of redefining eligibility with…
What are QIOs?
According to the CMS website, Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) are private, mostly not-for-profit organizations, which are staffed by professionals, mostly doctors and other health care professionals, who are trained to…
Spreading the Health Care Cost Pain to the Elderly
Medicare is the ever-growing elephant dragging the country under, so I’m pleased to see that its beneficiaries are starting to feel a bit of a squeeze. In Medicare rise could…
Urodynamix Develops Non-invasive Diagnostics For Urologic Conditions
Urodynamix Technologies is a medical devices company that has developed a technological platform utilizing near infrared spectroscopy to develop non-invasive diagnostic instruments for urologic conditions. Near infrared spectroscopy uses a…
Cost of Injection Jumps from $15 to $1,500
The following is from an AP story. See also Merrill Goozner’s comments here. A drug for high-risk pregnant women has cost about $10 to $20 per injection. Next week, the…
Metabolic/Bariatric Surgery Types
Gastric bypass surgery is currently considered the gold standard for surgical treatment of obesity. Studies have shown that patients tend to experience 50-80% excess weight loss (EWL) over a two…
Will There Be Enough PCPs To Treat New Medicaid Patients?
One of the key components of health reform is expanding Medicaid eligibility to more individuals. My comments on the Health Reform provisions were expanded Medicaid coverage was that it was…
