Tag: "Medicare"

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

ObamaCare tax increases are double original estimate.

The draft application to determine eligibility for ObamaCare subsidies includes a 21-page questionnaire.

Although Medicare spending for patients with advance cancers varies regionally, those differences are unrelated to survival rates.

One-third of U.S. counties are shrinking ― births exceed deaths.

Mar 14, 2013 | 14 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

Study: CT scans probably cause 2% of cancer cases in the U.S.

Most women with ovarian cancer miss out on treatments that could add a year or more to their lives.

Bad news for Medicare Advantage plans: national enrollment drop of 11 percent, and an average benefit loss of $2,235 per beneficiary.

Nurse refused to perform CPR to avoid liability.

Mar 12, 2013 | 11 comments | by

ACO Pioneers: Not So Fast

In February, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) sent out the 31 proposed quality targets that pioneers would have to meet if they wanted to receive bonus payments. Bonuses would be based on their ability to meet those targets beginning in 2013. But then, last week, 30 of the pioneers sent a letter to CMMI complaining that at least 19 of the quality targets had too little data behind them and were therefore unfair, unreasonable and even arbitrary.

More on accountable care strategies in the Kaiser Health News blog.

Mar 08, 2013 | 10 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

Email tells feds to make sequester as painful as promised.

AMA: taxpayers have no right to know how much the government pays doctors.

Medicare Trustee: the federal government is unlikely to keep its Medicaid promises.

Caesarian births range for 7 percent at one hospital to 70 percent at another.

Nearly one-third of doctors using the EHR system reported having missed or failed to follow up on key electronic alerts about patient test results.

Mar 07, 2013 | 11 comments | by

Increased Life Expectancy, and Other Links

Primitive hunter gatherers, at age 30, had the same odds of dying as a modern Swedish or Japanese man would face at 72.

Malpractice in the UK: The National Health Service normally pays out around £20,000 if the wrong testicle has been removed.

Poll: ObamaCare’s biggest beneficiaries are skeptical of ObamaCare.

Do health care providers lose money on Medicare patients? No.

Mar 05, 2013 | 11 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

Congress to business: higher minimum wage for you, none for us.

“Because financial incentives encouraged my patient to spend $0 rather than $7000 out of pocket, Medicare spent an unnecessary added $30,000 on his hospitalization and care.”

A15-member commission created to investigate the shortages of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals has never met in two and a half years because it has no money from Congress or the administration.

Mar 01, 2013 | 16 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

Without employment in the health care sector, which has added more jobs than any other sector, the United States would have fewer jobs than it did in 2000.

Feds outline what insurers must cover, down to polyp removal.

Medicare overpays on meds by hundreds of millions.

Portland to cut down giant sequoia for bike path.

Feb 28, 2013 | 11 comments | by

What Entitlement Reform Means to Liberals

  • Social Security: ‘Chained CPI’. Savings: $112 billion.
  • Social Security: Lift cap on taxable earnings. Revenues: $500 billion or more.
  • Social Security: Change the benefit formula. Savings: Would close half of Social Security shortfall.
  • Medicare: Expanded means testing. Savings: $20 billion.
  • Medicare: Faster payment reforms. Savings: $10 billion.
  • Medicare: Drug rebates. Savings: $135 billion.

Source: POLITICO.

Jan 30, 2013 | 6 comments | by

Hospital Readmissions

Austin Frakt has been doing an excellent job of reviewing the literature on this subject. This is from an overview of his recent posts:

The proportion of hospitalizations leading to rapid readmissions is shocking…But what causes readmissions?…Is this the fault of hospitals? Evidence about the extent to which hospital readmissions are related to quality of care during the index admission is mixed. Readmissions may be related to some notions of hospital quality or safety but not others. They are also related to many other factors that are not amenable to modification by hospitals. Joynt and Jha offer the most compelling and complete case that variation in socioeconomic status and hospital resources play large roles in variation in readmission rates. Hospitals that lose resources due to high readmission rates may be the very ones that can least afford it. Quality may suffer for the most vulnerable populations, which is the opposite of the policy’s goal…

The ability to predict hospital readmissions is modest, and little work has been done on predicting potentially preventable hospitalizations. MedPAC’s estimate that 79% of readmissions are avoidable is almost surely way too high. Here’s an evidence-based rule of thumb: 20% of Medicare hospitalizations lead to readmissions, and 20% of those are avoidable So, of all Medicare hospitalizations, perhaps about 4% lead to avoidable readmissions. That’s not nothing, but I’ll bet you thought it was higher.

The entire post and previous posts are worth reading.

Jan 28, 2013 | 10 comments | by

Cause of Readmissions

Nearly one in five hospitalized Medicare patients return to the hospital within 30 days.

Yet most of these patients return not because their previous illness has flared up, a new study suggests, but because they have an entirely new problem that, in many cases, was caused by the trauma of being hospitalized.

More on the case of patients readmitted to hospitals in USA Today.

Jan 25, 2013 | 9 comments | by
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