A medical student wants “to do the greatest good for the greatest number.” What kind of doctor should he/she become? Tyler Cowen answers. So does David Henderson.
The health co-ops are failing.
Can teledentistry actually work?
Eli Lilly’s answer to fake drugs: A $110 million bar code system with secret codes.
Federal government has seven different definitions of “health information technology“.
More evidence that medical homes don’t work.
A $295 spoon can detect and counter tremors in patients with Parkinson’s disease.
$175 million worth of worker output lost during first two days of college hoops’ “March Madness“.
Tom Miller is disappointed in the Coburn/Burr/Hatch health reform bill.
South Korea will not regulate Samsung’s Galaxy S5 (a smartphone with a heart-rate sensor) as a medical device. (See also previous blog entry)
Medicare Advantage cuts: Insurers’ advocacy campaign contradicts Wall Street analysts’ rosy outlook.
Today, all the physiological data monitored in a hospital intensive-care unit — including ECG, blood pressure, pulse, oxygenation, sugar level, breathing rate and body temperature — can be recorded and analyzed continuously in real time on a smartphone. A small piece of hardware, either the size of a cellphone, or one integrated with a cellphone, held against your body, functions as an ultrasound device. It can deliver information instantly to you or anyone you designate, and the information rivals that collected in a physician’s office or hospital setting. It can do so when you are experiencing specific symptoms — no appointment necessary — and at virtually no additional cost.
Thanks to more than 20 Silicon Valley startups and advances in microfluidic technology, smartphones will soon be able to function as a mobile, real-time resource for rapidly obtaining all the studies done currently in a medical laboratory, including chemistries, blood values and microbiological studies. A device worn on the wrist, called Visi, has been approved by the FDA for hospital use that can measure your heart’s electrical activity, respiratory rate, blood oxygen and blood pressure (without a cuff), and transmit the data wirelessly. Many other such devices are coming out that could be used by patients in their own homes. (WSJ)
MDLiv
e: One of the fastest-growing telemedicine startups where patients can register in minutes to speak with a board certified physician by email, on the phone, or in a video call.
Can exercise reduce cancer risk?
Government scientists deliberately giving volunteers the flu.
Following Medicare and Medicaid’s passage, I find that U.S.-based medical-equipment patenting rose by 40 to 50 percent relative to both other U.S. patenting and foreign medical-equipment patenting. Within the United States, increases in medical-equipment patenting were most dramatic in states where the Great Society insurance expansions were largest and in which there were large baseline numbers of physicians per resident. Consistent with historical case studies, Medical innovation’s determinants extend beyond the potential revenues associated with global market size; a physician driven process of innovation-while-doing appears to play a central role. An extrapolation of the evidence suggests that the last half century’s U.S. insurance expansions have driven 25 percent of recent global medical-equipment innovation. In a standard decomposition of health spending growth, this insurance-induced innovation accounts for 15 percent of the long run rise in U.S. health spending in hospitals, physicians’ offices, and other clinical settings.
Know someone who drowned from jumping off burning water skis? Well, there’s a new medical billing code for that.
Been injured in a spacecraft? There’s a new code for that, too.
Roughed up by an Orca whale? It’s on the list.
There are codes for injuries incurred in opera houses and while knitting, and one for sibling rivalry.
Next fall, a transformation is coming to the arcane world of medical billing. Overnight, virtually the entire health care system — Medicare, Medicaid, private insurers, hospitals, doctors and various middlemen — will switch to a new set of computerized codes used for determining what ailments patients have and how much they and their insurers should pay for a specific treatment.
I.C.D.-10, with codes containing up to seven digits or letters, will have about 68,000 for diagnoses and 87,000 for procedures.
Andrew Pollack at the NYT.
