Maryland Hospital Brightens The Mood with Art

Maryland Hospital Brightens The Mood with Art in General Healthcare

These days, health care and health insurance are pretty gloomy subjects. Heated debates, waste, fraud and even death panels!

While we hear everyday the horrors of the health care system today, there are still plenty of positive aspects to our system and the professionals we rely on to take care of us.

Take the Anne Arundel Medical Center in Parole, Maryland, which is currently undergoing renovations.  From an article in the Capitol, the third floor critical care unit is getting the worst of the effects.

Because bright construction lights and glare are seeping into patients’ rooms, hospital staff had to put dark film coverings on the windows. Talk about making a hospital room as dreary as possible.

But where we see dreariness, two AAMC nurses saw opportunity. They decided to use the construction light pollution to illuminate colorful paintings the windows and fill rooms with beautiful art.

We like it.

What a great job by the folks at AAMC of doing the turning-lemons-into-lemonade thing.

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Study Shows Preventive Health Care Might Not Be A True Cost Saver

Study Shows Preventive Health Care Might Not Be A True Cost Saver in General Healthcare

In an interesting upcoming study, new data will show that preventive care might not bring the major cost savings many lawmakers — and President Obama — are counting on to help pay for sweeping health reform.

According to the Washington Post, long-standing clinical trials will show that the youngest Americans with chronic conditions, specifically diabetes, will add to overall health spending even with early preventive care intervention.

Even those who are older and participate in aggressive programs to control their conditions will only break even in costs after 25 years.

This isn’t good news for those counting on positive predictions from the Congressional Budget Office on reform efforts — the CBO only looks 10 years ahead for savings.

To alleviate this problem, some Democratic lawmakers are proposing legislation to extend that window to 25 years. Critics will likely point out that this would simply be a way to manipulate the data to appease certain political and policy positions.

Still, it’s hard to argue the logic behind preventive care and the value of health insurance plans that cover it. While the article looked at data from patients who already have diabetes, we also have to think about how preventive medicine can stop some from developing chronic conditions. That’s truly where the savings in preventive care lies.

More preventive care leads to fewer cases of chronic conditions which leads to lower spending. Reasonable?

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Health Insurance Survey Reveals High Fees Are Part of the Problem

Health Insurance Survey Reveals High Fees Are Part of the Problem in General Healthcare

A survey released by America’s Health Insurance Plans reveals exorbitant out-of-network fees — and charges that these are playing a significant role in rising health care costs.

Some of the figures in the study are definitely striking. For example, a cataract surgery that Medicare pays $675 for cost one patient in Illinois $12,712. A knee operation that Medicare pays $584 for cost a California patient $20,120. And a New Jersey patient was charged $72,000 for a spinal fusion procedure that Medicare covers for only $1,629.

“It’s the wild, wild West when it comes to prices of anything in the U.S. health care system, whether for a doctor visit or for hospital charges,” said Jonathan S. Skinner, a health economist at Dartmouth in an interview with The New York Times.

This could cause a whole new ripple in health insurance and health care reform since there don’t currently exist any specific proposals to control prices for out-of-network medical services.

State laws protecting patients from getting stuck with medical bills in excess of their normal deductibles or co-payments vary widely. And the laws often offer little or no protection to patients who seek care outside their insurance networks.  

AHIP, which represents 1,300 health insurance companies, did the survey in reaction to recently becoming a target of criticism. They stated that they compiled the report to point out doctors’ fees as one of many other factors increasing health care costs.

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Pew Survey: Health Consumers Turn to the Web for Health Care and Health Insurance Information

Pew Survey: Health Consumers Turn to the Web for Health Care and Health Insurance Information in General Healthcare

A new study released today by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the California HealthCare Foundation revealed that 61% of all adults go online for health information, including getting health insurance quotes and finding doctor reviews.

Gone are the days of limiting your health knowledge to your doctor and immediate circle. A few mouse clicks now grants us as much information as we can digest. And even at that point, online group forums, podcasts and email queries can make further sense of a subject. For health matters, this makes a big difference.

A whopping 42% of all adults say they or someone they know has been helped by health information found on the Internet. Even more impressive is how fast that number is rising: Just three years ago, only 25% reported finding useful help online.

We find these figures heartening — and logical. Whether you’re researching Medicare or shopping clinics, the health care landscape in general is going digital. Hospitals and insurance companies, such as Kaiser Permanente, are migrating to a mostly paperless operation, and in February, President Obama signed a stimulus bill that gives $19 billion to hospitals to invest in technology.

As The Wall Street Journal Health Blog points out, “the growth in mobile access has let people access and share health information on their own time,” which is another indicator that this trend will only increase in the future.

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Study: 60 Percent of Personal Bankruptcies Fueled by Medical Bills

Study: 60 Percent of Personal Bankruptcies Fueled by Medical Bills in General Healthcare

As President Obama continues calling for health care reform, the report published in the American Journal of Medicine brought even more urgency to the debate.

Researchers from Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University surveyed 2,134 random families who filed for bankruptcy between January and April 2007, finding that 62% had crushing levels of medical debt.

Now, consider that the survey predates the economic crisis. And that 75 percent of these families had health insurance. Most of them, the paper stated, were “well-educated, owned homes and had middle-class occupations.”

The phenomenon of ‘underinsurance’ is becoming more and more common. A 2007 Commonwealth Fund study reveals that 25 million Americans have inadequate health coverage, whether they realize it or not.

Hopefully this growing trend, along with the 50 million who have no health insurance at all and these current bust times will push Congress to meet the August 1 deadline for health care reform.

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UnitedHealth Recommendations To Save $540 Billion In 10 Years

UnitedHealth Recommendations To Save $540 Billion In 10 Years in General Healthcare

After the confusion of what was (and was not) promised to President Obama in a meeting between the president and health industry executives, one thing remains true: We have to figure out ways to slow health care costs and save money.

Cutting health care costs is something we can all agree on, we just have to come up with a plan to get the ball rolling.

This week, UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies, came out with recommendations for the health care system that could save some $540 billion in 10 years, reported the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Here were the highlights:

• Reduce hospital visits for elderly with improved preventive care, follow-up visits, and patient education.
• Sending patients to highest quality and most efficient doctors
• Reduce use of highly advanced and expensive medical technology

“This is about improving the appropriateness of care that is delivered across the health care system,” said UnitedHealth Executive Vice President Simon Stevens.

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Hospitals Slow To Adopt Electronic Medical Records

Hospitals Slow To Adopt Electronic Medical Records in General Healthcare

As we’ve blogged about before, doctors have been mighty slow in making the switch to electronic medical records even though health care experts and lawmakers have been near unanimous on its potential for improving health care quality and reducing costs.

Hospitals are also slow to adopt an electronic records system, found a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, reported the Associated Press and the Austin American-Statesman.

The survey conducted by the NEJM found fewer than 2 percent of U.S. hospitals has fully implemented electronic records, and only 8 to 11 percent have basic electronic systems.

Most point to cost as the biggest deterrent for making the switch — it costs thousands of dollars to move to electronic medical records.

But this AP/Statesman article also brought up a good point: What should be the standard software for electronic records?

For electronic records to actually be effective in improving communication, the systems of health care providers and health insurance companies need to be able to talk with one another and send data in compatible formats.

The Obama Administration, like the previous Bush Administration, made a goal to get all health care providers to switch — they’ve even allocated $19 billion to help in the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009.

But we’re not sure whether or not they’ve come up with a standard procedure for all of this.

Maybe it’s a good thing health care providers are slow to move.

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Pay-Per-Performance Health Care Not Yet Proven To Improve Quality

Pay-Per-Performance Health Care Not Yet Proven To Improve Quality in General Healthcare

In theory, moving to a health care and health insurance system of pay-per-performance is a grand idea.

Doctors improve health care quality by adopting new technologies such as electronic medical records to help reduce errors and strengthen communication, and shy away from expensive tests that might not be necessary.

Doing these things to improve care would increase their payments for their services just as billing as many tests as possible did, if not more.

Some providers around country have indeed implemented such a system, in efforts to improve the quality of care and reduce health care costs at the same time.

But researchers at the RAND Corporation, a non-profit research organization, found that after a few years, such systems haven’t yet borne the results everyone was hoping for.

RAND researchers looked at seven different California health insurance plans and over 200 physicians groups over the course of 6 years, reported Reuters.

RAND’s assessment? So far, no “substantial” gains.

“The true benefits of these programs may take more time to be realized and it is likely that investments in other quality efforts will be needed in addition to performance-based pay,” said RAND senior policy researcher, Cheryl Damberg.

Separate studies from RAND even found pay-per-performance systems interfered with doctor-patient relationships, wrote the article.

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In Health Care News: Looking at Cyberchondria, The Fear of What The Internet Says About Your Symptoms

In Health Care News: Looking at Cyberchondria, The Fear of What The Internet Says About Your Symptoms in General Healthcare

Every day, millions of people go online to research their health symptoms, only to find the worst of the worst diagnoses in their search results. And these results, for lack of a better phrase, are freaking people out big time.

The popular phrase that’s used for this is “cyberchondria,” which we’ll define as “the fear of the Internet’s diagnosis of your health symptoms.”

For example, when you search online for the word “headache” you’ll get results telling you it could be anything from a brain tumor to simple caffeine deficiency.

Unfortunately, because people tend to be natural worriers, we gravitate toward the bleaker results.

According to a medical news article in the Orlando Sentinel, researchers from Microsoft found a search for minor conditions frequently lead online users to pages with very serious conditions.

“People get scared and they only focus on the scary stuff. They don’t focus on the stuff that’s typical,” said Dr. Anthony Douglas, a physician based in Maitland, Florida.

But these serious illnesses are rare. Only one in 10,000 Americans has a brain tumor, for instance, reported the Sentinel article.

Cyberchondria is actually frustrating some doctors, who see patients taking what they find on the Web much too far. One mother was sure that her son had a tumor on his leg. But the hard, purple bump turned out to be nothing more than hardened grape jelly.

The wealth of knowledge we have on the Internet surely isn’t a bad thing, but self-diagnosing from online information probably should be avoided.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with checking things out online. But be careful of taking the grim search results too seriously.

“We’re taught in medical school that when most people have a headache, they have a headache. They don’t have a brain tumor,” said Dr. Bradley Block, another physician in Florida.

Think of it this way: Would you trust the diagnosis from a stranger who wasn’t a doctor, but just did a Google search of your symptoms?

It’s usually just better to go to a doctor.

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Will Money Spent For Electronic Medical Records Go To Waste?

Will Money Spent For Electronic Medical Records Go To Waste? in General Healthcare

When it comes to electronic medical records, there’s a near consensus that it’s a good idea. We say “near” consensus because it now seems that some are wary of investing in the technology.

Why?

For starters, it’s the way the funding for electronic records is defined in the new economic stimulus as written by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In the bill, doctors are eligible to receive bonus Medicare payments if they use electronic records in a “meaningful way,” wrote the Wall Street Journal.

It’s understandable Republican concerns with the wording on this one. What defines “meaningful?” Does that open the door for Medicare abuse and fraud?

House Minority Republicans voiced their concerns in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“Unfortunately, the $87 billion allocated for more Medicaid money for states doesn’t appear to hold them accountable for ensuring that the tax dollars are spent wisely,” wrote the letter.

Some in the health care industry agree.

“[Y]ou can bring in too much money too fast and not only waste it, but set us back,“ said John Glaser, a chief information officer for a Boston non-profit hospital.

The pessimism of Republicans and some health care professionals really isn’t surprising. The health system has proven that it’s wasteful, inefficient, and costly.

Why throw more money at a fire pit?

There’s certainly a trade-off either way you choose. If you don’t invest in medical information technology today, then we’ll be far behind our capabilities. But if we don’t go about implementing electronic records correctly, we could stand to lose millions, if not billions in the mess of the broken health system.

Decisions, decisions…

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While The Economy Worsens and More Jobs Are Lost, The Health Care Industry Grows

While The Economy Worsens and More Jobs Are Lost, The Health Care Industry Grows in General Healthcare

In November a staggering 533,000 jobs were lost, bumping the national unemployment rate to 6.7 percent from 6.5 percent, reported The New York Times.

Just about every industry is being hit in the weak economy except one ̬ the health care industry.

In the health care sector, 33,800 jobs were added in total for November for a monthly growth of 0.3 percent, reported Modern Healthcare.

Further, hospitals and physicians offices are also showing steady growth in 2008. This year, hospitals and physicians offices both increased their employee count by 3.1 percent.

It does make sense that this might be the case. Health care services are always in demand — and when budgets become tight, one’s health will usually trump other expenses. (Costs for health insurance plans, however, are another story.)

But there are other factors to the growth, as well, pointed out one health care analyst.

According to Robert Hawkins, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, the increasing number of Americans with chronic health conditions such as obesity is one of the main factors in health care growth.

The more people who have these chronic conditions, the more there is demand for health care professionals.

“With that volume comes jobs to take care of these folks,” said Hawkins.

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America's Health Rankings For 2008 Are In: Vermont Is Healthiest

America's Health Rankings For 2008 Are In: Vermont Is Healthiest in General Healthcare

UnitedHealth Foundation, a non-profit organization for improving health care, recently released their annual report from America’s Health Rankings for 2008. UnitedHealth Foundation was founded by UnitedHealth Group in 1999.

In the report, each U.S. state’s health is analyzed by various health metrics and ranked accordingly.

For 2008, Vermont is the healthiest state in the country — a title its held for two straight years by America’s Health Rankings.

Here are the top ten healthiest states:

     1. Vermont
     2. Hawaii
     3. New Hampshire
     4. Minnesota
     5. Utah
     6. Massachusetts
     7. Connecticut
     8. Idaho
     9. Maine
     10. Washington

And the ten lowest ranked states:

     50. Louisiana
     49. Mississippi
     48. South Carolina
     47. Tennessee
     46. Texas
     45. Florida
     44. Oklahoma
     43. Arkansas
     42. Nevada
     41. Georgia

The health metrics that America’s Health Rankings uses includes a range of health statistics such as:

• Prevalence of smoking
• Infectious diseases
• Children in poverty
• Population without health insurance
• Prenatal care quality
• Primary care physicians
• Preventable hospitalizations
• Infant mortality
• Cancer deaths

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Thanksgiving Greetings from GoHealth Insurance

Thanksgiving Greetings from GoHealth Insurance in General Healthcare

Last year, our Thanksgiving post covered the nutritional facts of your favorite Turkey Day foods.

Take another look, and have a great Thanksgiving weekend from everyone at GoHealthInsurance.com!

http://www.gohealthinsurance.com/blog/coverage/entry/20071121

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Medical Tourism Growing: Does The U.S. Provide The Best Care?

Medical Tourism Growing: Does The U.S. Provide The Best Care? in General Healthcare

Back before Election Day, there was plenty of debate on which health care reform would work best in the country.

Would the government be better at providing quality care, or would competition incentivize better care?

Well, if you’d look at the growing medical tourism trend, it might be neither. A foreign country might provide better care — at a much cheaper rate.

Medical tourism is when a patient travels overseas to another country, say India, for an expensive medical procedure. Why would anyone do such a thing? Care overseas is much, much cheaper.

According to a BusinessWeek article, a surgery that costs around $50,000 in the U.S. might only cost $10,000 in India.

On one hand, everyone wins.

The health insurance company pays less than half for major medical care in a foreign country even if they pay for the plane ticket. That might mean more health coverage for a patient, and could even mean lower premiums.

But on the other hand, there’s the obvious. If something goes wrong, does the patient have the same rights as in the U.S.? Can the patient be sure the care will actually be high quality?

Unfortunately, the answer would be ‘no’ to both questions. Although, there is an American non-profit organization that accredits hospitals and other helath facilities overseas for providing quality care.

Health insurance companies are also wary of follow-up health care from overseas procedures. Do they send the patient back overseas? Do they cover physical therapy or other follow-up care in the U.S.?

The BusinessWeek article wrote that many insurers are starting to get over their initial worries.

So will medical tourism become regular practice? If so, what does that say about our health care system in the U.S.? Has our health system become so inefficient and expensive that we’re doomed and have to travel across the globe to get cheap, quality care?

The comments section awaits.

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A New Health Care Idea: Hand-Held Health Care Reminder Devices To Store Medical Information

A New Health Care Idea: Hand-Held Health Care Reminder Devices To Store Medical Information in General Healthcare

Here’s a new idea in health care: a little mobile device that lets you store health information and upload it online.

The devices are aimed at people who are on the go and need to an easy way to manage their health.

Users can use these hand-held gizmos for writing down symptoms, storing important health care data to give a health care provider, or even alerting themselves when it’s time to take a pill, reported a Sunday New York Times article.

Will this be a potential new trend in the industry?

We would highly doubt it. The going rate for one of these things is around $200 — and it just doesn’t seem worth it.

There is, though, a software program that’s compatible with mobile devices like the iPhone. That might be a good idea. Also, electronic medical information and health records will likely become more prevalent as time goes on.

Maybe there will be a demand for these after all.

We’d probably be more on board if the devices helped people manage their health insurance plans. They could provide reminders about monthly premiums, let you do a quick check to see if a medical service or prescription drug is covered, or if a health care provider is in your health plan’s network.

We might be on to something…

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