Most Massachusetts residents are satisfied with their healthcare under the state's Obamacare-like system, and despite occasional long waits to see a physician, cost appears to be their main concern, according to a survey conducted by the Massachusetts Medical Society.
Seven years into the Massachusetts's so-called Romneycare reform model—the inspiration for the federal healthcare law—Massachusetts is often seen as a harbinger of things to come for the national reform experience.
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Before there can be patient-generated data, there have to be patients willing and able to provide it and tools to capture, communicate, receive and present it. That's where Dr. Susan Woods comes in.
“My focus is really on the patient's and the caregiver's use of electronic tools and on making value for patients in using these tools,” said Woods, who is the director of patient experience for the Veterans Health Administration.
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Stark
The healthcare world is populated by scores of legal experts who strive to keep up with the sprawling compendium of statutes, regulations and legal advisories known collectively as the “Stark law.” But the law's father, Fortney “Pete” Stark, is not one of them.
Stark, in fact, says he would favor repealing the law as it currently exists and getting back to the law's initial intent.
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Four charitable foundations in healthcare and one in journalism will participate in a $2 million contest to spark innovative uses of healthcare data.
“Health is an area where journalism, open data and public information overlap, giving us a direct, tangible opportunity to help people learn more and make smart choices through the use of technology and data,” Michael Maness, vice president for journalism and media innovation at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, said in a news release. The charity is named for the founders of the former Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers.
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Jain
When Dr. Anil Jain was an undergraduate in biomedical engineering at Northwestern University, he got a glimpse of his future in medical informatics.
“In many ways, cloud computing is a reminder back to when I was in engineering school,” Jain says. He recalls that students were given access to a slice of the school's mainframe computer. “I'd get to use a supercomputing environment without having to pay for it.”
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The findings of a new study published this week in BMJ Quality & Safety show the first evidence that electronic health records can play a role in reducing hospital readmissions of high-risk heart failure patients.
The study evaluated more than 1,700 adult inpatients diagnosed with heart failure, myocardial infarction and pneumonia over a two-year period at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. With the use of software developed to assess the patients on a daily basis at highest risk, researchers were able reduce the readmission rate of those studied by 26%.
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Wachter
Dr. Robert Wachter, a pioneer in the field of hospitalist medicine, has been elected to board of directors of IPC the Hospitalist Co., a North Hollywood, Calif.-based hospital medicine and physician group practice company operating in 28 states.
Wachter, a professor and associate chair at the University of California at San Francisco who just finished his term as chairman of the American Board of Internal Medicine, will chair the IPC board's quality committee.
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It's Christmas in July for Medicare-participating physicians—though the gift is far from being delivered. On Wednesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously passed bipartisan legislation to repeal Medicare's sustainable growth-rate formula and replace it with a stable system of payments to the nation's physicians.
For years, Congress has waited until the end of the calendar year to stave off a steep Medicare payment cut to physicians with a temporary fix.
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The for-profit assisted-living industry came under the harsh spotlight of PBS' “Frontline” investigators Tuesday night as the news program took Seattle-based Emeritus Corp. to task for a number of deaths and injuries involving residents with dementia at Emeritus facilities across the country.
Emeritus, which was founded in 1983 and has 483 facilities around the country, is the one of the country's biggest assisted-living operators.
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Supporters of the healthcare reform law got some good news from a survey just released by the healthcare policy briefing website The Morning Consult.
Nearly half of registered voters polled in the survey—47%—said they would be less likely to vote for a member of Congress in 2014 if the member tried to defund Obamacare as part of a federal budget package, compared with 28% who said they would be more likely to vote for the member.
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The Obama administration's recent decision to delay the 2010 healthcare reform law's employer mandate by a year is estimated to increase the law's net cost to the federal government by $12 billion over 10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation announced Tuesday. A relatively modest cost increase was predicted when the mandate delay was announced.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) had requested that the CBO and JCT assess the effects of the July decision to postpone for one year the law's provision that employers provide insurance to their workers or else pay a penalty. In a six-page report, the CBO noted that its May 2013 baseline projections had estimated the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's insurance provisions would cost the federal government about $1.36 billion between 2014 and 2023. After the Treasury department's recent announcement, the CBO recalculated those projections and now estimates the insurance coverage measures in the law will cost the federal government about $1.375 billion over that same 10-year period.
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