Consultants to employers: drop health insurance.
Does the president have an “enemies list”?
A tribute to Milton Friedman. HT: Greg Mankiw.
Hospital debt collectors catch deadbeats in the emergency room and in hospital beds.
Until then, emergency rooms around the country will just have to guess between W22.02XA and W22.02XD.
W22.02XA is the code for “walked into lamppost, initial encounter.”
W22.02XD is the code for “walked into lamppost, subsequent encounter.”
Entire article in Modern Healthcare worth reading.
The cost for just walking in the door of the emergency room? That came to $1,288. The ultrasound nicked him an additional $1,135. A comprehensive metabolic panel (blood analysis) was billed at $1,212. Moser was also charged $158, accidentally, for the saline solution he had turned down. The total came to $4,852.55, not counting separate bills that would arrive later and total nearly $1,000, including $540 for pathology and $309 for the doctor.
Source: Steve Lopez in the LA Times. HT: Jason Shafrin.
To determine whether any changes in ED utilization in Massachusetts reflected the effect of Massachusetts’ reform or were merely representative of broader regional trends in ED utilization, we used New Hampshire and Vermont as control states…
The data on combined inpatient and outpatient ED [Emergency Department] use (top graph) suggest that the Massachusetts reform did not change the state’s trend in total ED utilization relative to that in states where no such reform was enacted. The continuous upward trend in ED utilization throughout the three periods is remarkably consistent from state to state; if we didn’t know which state had implemented the reform law, we could not guess on the basis of these data….. In summary, ED use increased in Massachusetts after reform but also increased by similar amounts in New Hampshire and Vermont, states that did not implement insurance expansions.
Tests such as CT scans and ultrasounds add to hospital bills, but doctors said that such tests given right after patients showed up in emergency rooms only helped with diagnosis in roughly one of three cases, the study — published in the Archives of Internal Medicine — said.
Full article on doctors requiring fewer tests to diagnose patients.
For those with short memories, let’s review the bidding. The argument for the Massachusetts health plan was: Instead of providing free care to the uninsured at emergency rooms and safety-net clinics let’s insure them so that they can get more accessible, less costly care from regular physicians. The result: traffic to hospital emergency rooms in Massachusetts is higher than ever and now this:
The report, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that the number of patients treated at the health centers rose 31 percent from 2005 to 2009. During the same period, the percent of uninsured patients at the clinics declined from 35.5 percent to about 20 percent.
95 percent who had a heart device implanted at the hospital center got one made by Biotronik. [The company hires doctors] as consultants, paying them fees as high as $5,000 a month.
Dems ask for Scott Brown’s health records.
Caffeine consumption is genetic.
The percentage of doctors saying that the financial benefits of electronic records outweigh the costs fell to 64% from 71% last year. And the percentage saying the patient-care benefits justified the financial investment fell to 68% from 73%. This year’s survey also found doctors were less likely to agree that electronic records can help reduce medical errors, improve efficiency and lower costs. And a greater proportion of physicians said electronic records slow them down and don’t achieve a measurable financial impact.
Full article on doctors’ views of electronic medical records.
Maimonides Medical Center…a Borough Park hospital known for its cardiac and stroke care…saw 109,925 patients in 2009 — the year of the flu pandemic — up from 97,613 in 2008 and 81,931 in 2005… Like the neighborhoods around it, Maimonides is filled with immigrants — the hospital employs 46 patient representatives who speak a total of 70 languages…
In the nonurgent wing, patients typically see a doctor within 20 minutes. But they can lie on gurneys a long time waiting for tests and re-examinations — the median emergency room stay last year was 3.72 hours. The room is so packed that nurses, doctors and technicians squeeze past quadrupled-up gurneys in each bay, colliding in a dance of you first; no, you first.
Full article on how the nation’s emergency rooms are busier than ever.
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