Mobile computing devices are becoming almost as much of an essential tool in U.S. physician practices as the exam table, according to a new survey.
Nearly 80% of 300 U.S. practicing physicians in primary care, family and internal medicine that were sampled and surveyed in April said they were using a smartphone in their “day-to-day practice.” Another 61% were using mobile tablets.
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Nearly every expert and group that has looked at how to control U.S. medical cost growth says more Americans should fill out advance directives to help reduce costly futile care at the end of life. In 2009, there was some bipartisan support in Congress for having Medicare pay physicians for their time in counseling patients on living wills and end-of-life care. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) pushed for inclusion of the provision in the healthcare reform legislation.
But Sarah Palin and other conservatives twisted this into “death panels,” accusing President Barack Obama and the Democrats of trying to throw granny off the cliff. Terrified Democratic sponsors of the reform legislation yanked the provision. But the death panel myth helped fuel the rise of the Tea Party and the Republican takeover of the House in 2010.
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Republican and Democratic leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released the latest version of a draft bill to repeal Medicare's sustainable growth-rate formula calling for a five-year period of stable payment increases as physicians transition into new payment models. But lawmakers still offered no way to offset the cost of the repeal.
Totaling 70 pages, the bill is a work in progress, as the panel's health subcommittee will mark up the legislation next week. Committee members—along with members of the House Ways and Means Committee—have worked throughout the year to craft a bill incorporating comments from more than 80 stakeholders. As before, this version of the bill gives providers the option of leaving traditional Medicare fee-for-service to try new payment models that emphasize better quality and lower costs.
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It's enough to make your head spin. Estimated costs for visits to hospital emergency departments for dizziness-related complaints exceed $4 billion a year, according to a new study.
Dizziness and vertigo are the chief symptoms presented by 3.9 million—or about 4%—of all emergency department patients, Johns Hopkins University researchers report
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There was good news and bad news in a new study on the costs versus benefits of electronic health-record use in ambulatory care.
First the good news. The adoption and use of EHRs by physicians in three Massachusetts communities appears to have reduced cost growth. Use of EHRs coincided with costs that were $5.14 per patient per month lower than projected, compared with a control group, according to a report appearing July 16 online in JAMA Internal Medicine.
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Should hospitals focus on the specific diseases that lead to the most readmissions, or should they look at internal issues that may be driving their overall readmission rates higher? It's a crucial question as hospital leaders search for ways to improve outcomes and avoid rising Medicare penalties for high readmission rates.
A new study suggests a disease-based focus on heart failure readmissions—one of the biggest drivers of high readmission rates—returns modest benefits at best.
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Mostashari
CMS officials pushed back Wednesday on Republican suggestions that a pause is needed in the electronic health-record incentive program.
“A pause in the program would stall the progress that's been hard fought,” Dr. Farzad Mostashari, national coordinator for health information technology, said at a Wednesday hearing on the program by the Senate Finance Committee.
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Hoven
A group of healthcare providers have recommended strategies to reduce five commonly overused and sometimes unnecessary medical treatments or interventions, such as the use of antibiotics for viral upper respiratory infections and early elective deliveries.
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Being a cardiologist in the 21st century means knowing that your Medicare claims are likely to get a lot of scrutiny. So cardiologists have to pay a lot more attention to documenting what they do in the electronic health record.
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The CDC calls its mini-reports "VitalSigns."
Here is something from their latest:
Accidental deaths among women who overuse prescription drugs are rapidly rising, with a fivefold increase in deaths from abuse of opioid painkillers leading the way, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports in its latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report. In 2010, there were 15,323 deaths among women from drug overdoses—a rate of 9.8 for every 100,000 women.
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Dr. Peter Bach, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, is calling for a radical revamp of Medicare's cancer drug payment program. "The current financing method for physician-administered oncology drugs is unsustainable," he writes in an online Viewpoint on the Journal of the American Medical Association website.
Oncology practices currently operate by charging a mark-up on the retail sales price of chemotherapy drugs. Previously set at 6%, the federal budget sequester dropped that to 4.2%, and the CMS is talking about further lowering it to 3% to hold down costs as the price of the latest cancer drugs soars. The average sales price system provides oncologists with bigger margins if they choose the most expensive drugs, which they are under increasing pressure to do because of the cuts. Responding to oncologists' protests, at least 91 sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives have signed onto legislation restoring the 6% mark-up.
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