The Obama administration is in the midst of making plans to spend $19 billion on modernizing medical record-keeping systems, but is it going to be enough? Most hospitals are seriously behind when it comes to digital technology, with a full 98% of American hospitals retaining a paper-based medical record-keeping and billing system. And with the debate over Universal Health Care in full swing, it seems that everyone is looking for ways to save on individual health insurance and health care.

According to the results of a new national survey, less than 2% of American hospitals have completely switched to an electronic medical record-keeping system.

(more…)

Many of us are predisposed towards a mistrust of drug companies. The fact is, they make billions of dollars every year, and it seems like most would do anything for a buck. Recent news that AstraZeneca allegedly suppressed negative information about Seroquel, an anti-psychotic drug, is not helping the tarnished image that the pharmaceutical industry has earned.

A Washington Post article published recently outlines the study, known as “Study 15,” and reported that AstraZeneca had suppressed the study’s negative results, and at the same time promoted more positive results from other studies with less stringent protocols.

(more…)

President-elect Barack Obama should take note – health reform is about the little things just as much as it is sweeping changes to the system.

Information gathered from a batch of more than 8,500 meetings held around the country in December will be compiled and used to help design the healthcare proposal that has been in the news as of late. Obama’s transition team plans to post some of the material at change.gov.

One particular meeting took place late December 2008, between newly appointed secretary of health and human services, the former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and more than two dozen seniors During this meeting, seniors told Daschle that they placed more importance on certain things such as waiting times to see their doctor, the increasing cost of prescription drugs, and the narrow range of Medicare coverage for certain medical procedures, equipment, and treatments.

(more…)

It’s not just the unemployed facing healthcare insurance problems, according to a new Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report compiling research carried out by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota. Nearly 20% of American workers have no health insurance, up from around 14% in the mid-1990s.

During the mid-1990s, one in seven American workers had no insurance. Just ten years later, that figure has increased to one in five workers uninsured, or around six-million more people over the mid-1990s total.

(more…)

The $787 billion economic stimulus package that was signed into law last week includes one or two health-related measures that haven’t been widely publicized, but which are no less important for it.

One of these is the $1.1 billion that has been assigned for a study to compare the effectiveness of a large number of medical treatments, drugs, surgeries, and other current standard medical procedures and devices. A council of fifteen federal employees will be set up to coordinate the research and advise the President and Congress on where the money would best be spent.

The program is a response to growing concerns that doctors have little solid evidence on which to base the value of many of the treatments that are currently considered standard.

(more…)

Japan’s overcrowded, understaffed hospitals are in danger – and so are the people who rely on those hospitals when they need emergency medical care. An elderly Japanese man who sustained head injuries after being struck by a motorcycle waited ninety minutes in an ambulance – while paramedics phoned fourteen different Tokyo hospitals, trying to find a hospital that would accept the man for treatment. All the hospitals refused to admit the injured man, saying they lacked the equipment and staff needed to treat him. The paramedics arrived at the accident site just a few minutes after the 69-year-old man was injured, but ninety minutes and fourteen hospitals later, the man died just a short time after paramedics finally located a hospital that would accept him for treatment. The man died from the shock caused by the loss of a large amount of blood – a condition which the man might have survived if he had received treatment earlier.

(more…)

The big healthcare news from the Obama administration over the last few weeks has been that the State Child’s Health Insurance Program will be expanded, but another SCHIP-related change that happened around the same time hasn’t received as much attention.

This change is a reversal of enrollment rules imposed in August 2007 by the Bush administration. Controversial at the time, the new rules made it much more difficult for states to allow certain families to use SCHIP. For families whose income totaled more than 250% of the federal poverty line (that equates to around $50,000 per year for a family of four), it suddenly became all but impossible to use SCHIP. Several states actually sued the federal government over this change, including Maryland, Illinois and Washington.

In May 2008, Bush relented a little by reducing the income restriction to around 200% of the federal poverty line, or about $40,000 per year for a family of four.

(more…)

The close ties between doctors and the drug industry are long-standing, but recently health policy experts have been saying that it’s about time those ties were cut. Over the years, many reports of drug companies providing financial and material perks for doctors has caused an erosion of public trust in medical professionals – and experts say that to repair that particular problem, it’s time for doctors to cut ties with the drug companies that provide the kick-backs.

A series of comments made by health policy experts in the British Medical Journal elaborate on the issue, saying that doctors might have to give up the freebies to win back public trust. From inexpensive prescription pads and pens to seminars at luxurious hotels, there are plenty of rewards for doctors who cultivate good relationships with drug companies.

(more…)

After being accused of overcharging millions for health care insurance, one of America’s biggest insurers has agreed to a $50 million settlement pay-out.

Hundreds of people made complaints about charges made by Oxford Insurance, and its parent company UnitedHealth Group. The parent company claims that its reimbursement rates are based on “independent research from across the health care industry,” but an investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office revealed that it’s actually Ingenix, a research firm owned and operated by UnitedHealth Group, that supplies the data.

This isn’t just a case of conflict of interest, however – it gets much worse.

According to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Ingenix has been manipulating the data, allowing UnitedHealth Group’s Oxford Insurance to pay less for reimbursement of its customers.

(more…)

Early in January, the California High Court banned emergency room doctors from directly billing insured patients, after their HMOs refused to pay their emergency medical care bills. The High Court has decided that doctors should not be allowed to take up the issue with patients if they believe they’ve been shortchanged by the patient’s HMO.

This new ruling affects around 21 million people, providing them with protection if they are treated by emergency room doctors who are not covered by their HMO plan.

The issue centers around a practice called balance billing. Sometimes, HMOs don’t cover the entirely of an emergency treatment bill, typically because the doctor used by the policy holder isn’t covered by the HMO’s plan. In these cases, the doctor concerned normally directly bills the patient who received the treatment.

(more…)