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Physician Discusses The Confusing Aspects Of Medicare Part D

I have discussed Medicare Part B and Part F in recent blogs. A reader asked about Medicare Part D:

Dr. Feld

“Please discuss Medicare Part D, the drug benefit plan available to seniors. It is very complicated and completely confusing to me.

My physician gave me a prescription for Levequin 500 mg once a day for 10 days. The pharmacist told me it would cost me $330 dollars. Medicare Part D would pay an additional $110 dollars for a total of $440 dollars.

I asked the pharmacist if there was a generic equivalent. The answer was yes. It cost $10 dollars.

This is unconscionable. It is highway robbery.

Sincerely

a.g.”

Several issues are presented in this readers note. It is essential to understand these issues. The issues are an indictment against government “controlled” programs. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Repairing the Healthcare System*

Robotic Pharmacy Prepares 350,000 Doses Of Medication Without A Single Error

Pharmacy robot selects medications from drawers.The University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) has made a significant announcement that could be a watershed moment for how medications are given to hospital patients in the United States.

In a typical hospital setting, patients are receiving many different types of prescription medications — ranging from mundane vitamins to more intense drugs such as chemotherapy. In the thousands of times medications are given to patients, and with the high number of humans handling the process of organizing and giving the medications, human error is bound to occur. And medication errors can be life threatening — especially if related to a chemotherapy agent.

UCSF wants to make the rate of error for medication administration to be zero. In order to do this, they are using robot technology to prepare and track medications, with the main goal, obviously, being to improve patient safety. In the phase-in of the project, not a single error occurred in the 350,000 doses of medication prepared — remarkable.

Here’s how it works (from the UCSF press release):

Once computers at the new pharmacy electronically receive medication orders from UCSF physicians and pharmacists, the robotics pick, package, and dispense individual doses of pills. Machines assemble doses onto a thin plastic ring that contains all the medications for a patient for a 12-hour period, which is bar-coded.

There are some key advantages this system brings to the workflow of a hospital setting:

— The robots can do chemotherapy dosing, one of the toughest and most sensitive things to do. They can also do complex IV medication dosing.

— There is no touching of the medications by hand. The medications come from the manufacturer, are processed by the robots, and then sent to the nurses and the patient’s bedside in sterile packaging.

— The robots allow for pharmacists and nurses to be more efficient by taking away repetitive tasks. While they do not replace either, they enable a healthcare system already stretched for resources to increase productivity.

 — The system costs $15 million, but with the payoff in regards to improved patient outcomes, as well as time saved, the investment should make this endeavor by UCSF more than worthwhile.

Watch this video to see the robots in action:

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

Overmedicated Teenagers

Teen stressIt is summer camp season for kids and well-run camps require a medical history and record of prescription medications that the child is taking. One prestigious camp for teens (ages 11 to 19 — average camper is 16) in Southern California recently had 153 residential teenagers. These kids come from California and other states across the U.S. Fifty percent come from out of state and a number of campers each week are international.

Okay, so far so good. Healthy teens getting together for a week of learning and fun. Here is the shocker! I was amazed to learn that almost 25 percent of these kids are on prescription medication. Can it be that we are overmedicating teens?

Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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