It's not easy to start a movement, but a new group of physicians and healthcare researchers are hoping to do so. They are looking to the Institute of Medicine to bolster their efforts to reduce diagnosis errors that lead to delayed or inappropriate treatments.
“It's affecting hundreds of thousands of people a year, but it gets very little attention from healthcare organizations and physicians in general,” said Dr. Mark Graber, founder and president of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine. “We haven't encountered any pushback, it's more just apathy.”
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New research calls into question the validity of using post-operative blood clot rates as a metric of hospital quality. According to a study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, rates of venous thromboembolism—a term that includes pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis—could be skewed by surveillance bias.
Such bias can occur in hospitals that have more expansive screening criteria for VTE, including the testing of asymptomatic patients, or in hospitals that rely more heavily on imaging for diagnosis, said the authors, who analyzed data from the CMS' Hospital Compare, the American Hospital Association and Medicare claims.
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Months after the latest trial of a possible HIV vaccine were halted because it was ineffective, newly published details suggest researchers and advocates made important strides with some the country's hardest-hit and difficult-to-reach populations.
The study, published in the Oct. 7 online issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, found the two-year trial of an experimental HIV vaccine did not prevent HIV among participants, with 41 cases of infection among those who received the vaccine compared with 30 cases among those who took the placebo.
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More than 700,000 federal workers will be looking for ways to put food on the table as much of the federal government shut down Tuesday over budget squabbles in Congress.
But if you're a federal rat, it's still fat city. Federal mice, too.
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Diagnostic errors produce the vast majority of medical malpractice suits related to primary-care practice, and it's harder to successfully defend such cases than other types of malpractice suits, according to a report in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Using health information technology to prevent these errors should be a priority, the authors said.
Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and other Massachusetts organizations examined malpractice cases handled and closed by the state's two largest medical liability insurers from January 2005 through December 2009. They found 551 (7.7%) cases were primary-care related and, of these, 397 (72.1%) were associated with diagnosis errors.
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The key to effective health information technology in a small, office-based medical practice is to properly install the newly purchased electronic health-record system, according to a new report from KLAS Enterprises.
KLAS's review of 27 vendors' products found that unhappiness with an EHR vendor's installation effort leads to practices switching to another vendor. It also found that such flipping is on the rise. KLAS did not quantify, in aggregate, the percentage of practices committed to changing systems.
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A trade group representing the orthotics and prosthetics industry is accusing the CMS of failing to enforce anti-fraud and abuse laws against unlicensed providers at a time when legitimate providers are coming under fire from increasingly aggressive Medicare recovery auditors.
The American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association—which represents more than 2,000 businesses that manufacture, distribute and supply patients with orthopedic braces and artificial limbs—released the results of a study this week that says the number of Medicare patients receiving the medical equipment from noncertified personnel has not changed significantly even though the rules were tightened in 2000 and 2005.
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Most of the people who come to the emergency room with gunshot wounds have no insurance, and if they're admitted as inpatients, hospitals will spend an average of $23,500 caring for them, according to a new study of gun trauma and healthcare costs.
But the study from the Urban Institute found that gunshot victims' uninsured status may affect their care. “Uninsured victims of firearm assaults appear to have different treatment when they arrive at the ED. Their ED visits are the most expensive, they are admitted for inpatient care less often, and their treatment, once admitted, appears to be less intensive,” the study says. “The numbers indicate that some hospitals may be making treatment decisions based on the insurance status of the patient rather than the patient's condition.”
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Two new studies have put a price tag on healthcare services considered of little benefit to patients. In both reports, researchers raised questions about the role that healthcare providers play in delivering potentially unnecessary care.
One study examined the cost of care for patients who were taken by ambulance to the most sophisticated, well-equipped trauma centers despite injuries that required far less intensive care.
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Spending on healthcare is expected to rise just 4.5% next year as employers and providers make a number of moves to bring down costs.
In its annual Behind the Numbers report, PricewaterhouseCoopers' Health Research Institute is forecasting a medical cost trend of 6.5% for 2014—offset by health insurance changes that will effectively lower that number two percentage points.
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Spending on healthcare is expected to rise just 4.5% next year as employers and providers make a number of moves to bring down costs.
In its annual Behind the Numbers report, PricewaterhouseCoopers' Health Research Institute is forecasting a medical cost trend of 6.5% for 2014—offset by health insurance changes that will effectively lower that number two percentage points.
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