November 30th, 2010 by Medgadget in Better Health Network, News, Research
Tags: Bacterium, E. Coli, Gastroenterology, Gastrointestional Tract, Japan, Medgadget, RNA, Sudoku, University of Tokyo
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E. coli is a Gram negative rod-shaped bacterium that is a regular inhabitant of the human gastrointestinal tract and certain strains can cause a lot of trouble. A team from the University of Tokyo in Japan, however, have manipulated the bacterium to perform a more noble task: Solving Sudoku.
The bacterium managed to solve 4×4 grid Sudoku puzzles, and in theory the more common 9×9 grid puzzles should be solvable as well. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
November 29th, 2010 by Happy Hospitalist in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
Tags: Government-Paid Healthcare, Happy Hospitalist, Healthcare Costs, Healthcare Economics, Healthcare Price-Fixing, Hospital Reimbursement, How Doctors Are Paid By Medicare, medicaid, Medicare, Medicare Reimbursement, Medicare's Acute Care Inpatient Payment, New York Times, Payment For Inpatient Care
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Have you ever wondered how hospitals get paid by Medicare? The New York Times has an excellent and simple explanation of this highly complicated process. It’s simple really.
First the hospital labor component is adjusted for geographic location and then added to the capital depreciation expenditures adjusted for geographic location and then a medical severity adjusted diagnosis related group multiplier is added (MS-DRG).
Once this adjusted payment rate is calculated, the hospital is given a bonus to cover the costs incurred if they are a teaching hospital, through the indirect medical education payment. Added to that is the disproportionate share payment for hospitals that see a lot of uninsured or Medicaid patients (strange that Medicare subsidizes Medicaid, isn’t it?) If you have a patient that is extremely sick or spends mulitple extra days in the hospital, they may get an extra outlier payment. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
November 29th, 2010 by GarySchwitzer in Better Health Network, News, Opinion, Research
Tags: Annals of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Ivan Oransky, Evidence-Based Health Reporting, Gary Schwitzer, Health Journalism, HealthNewsReview.org, Medical Journalists, Medical Journals, Medical Peers' Professional Opinions, Medical Reporting, Peer Review System, Peer Reviewers, Peer-Reviewed Journals, Peer-Reviewed Publications, Retraction Watch, Science Journalists
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Interesting post by the Retraction Watch blog, pointing to an interesting paper published last week in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. An excerpt from the blog post:
Over 14 years, 84 editors at the journal rated close to 15,000 reviews by about 1,500 reviewers. Highlights of their findings:
…92% of peer reviewers deteriorated during 14 years of study in the quality and usefulness of their reviews (as judged by editors at the time of decision), at rates unrelated to the length of their service (but moderately correlated with their mean quality score, with better-than average reviewers decreasing at about half the rate of those below average). Only 8% improved, and those by very small amount.
How bad did they get? The reviewers were rated on a scale of 1 to 5 in which a change of 0.5 (10%) had been earlier shown to be “clinically” important to an editor. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
November 29th, 2010 by DrWes in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
Tags: Diplomatic Cables, Dr. Wes Fisher, Electronic Medical Record, EMR, General Medicine, Government-Funded Healthcare, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare Privacy, Patient Confidentiality, Patient Privacy Laws, Personal Health Records, Private Healthcare Information, Unauthorized Disclosure, WikiLeaks
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From the official White House statement yesterday regarding WikiLeaks disclosure of diplomatic cables:
“By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights, but also the lives and work of the individuals. We condemn in strongest terms, the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.”
No matter what people think of WikiLeaks disclosure of approximately 250,000 classified diplomatic cables to the Internet yesterday with the help of the New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde, the implications to electronic healthcare information security are significant.
Day in and day out, I type huge volumes of information on my patients on a computer and my fellow physicians do the same. As a result, vast healthcare information warehouses are at the disposal of the government, insurers, and major healthcare institutions eager to become more efficient, strategic, or competitive. We are promised the information is private, confidential, and even stripped of its identifiers for group analysis. It is even protected to remain so by law. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
November 29th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Research
Tags: ACP Internist, American College Of Physicians, Diabetes, Diabetes-Related Care, Drive Down The Cost of Healthcare, Endocrinology, Healthcare Cost Curve, Healthcare Economics, Healthcare Exchange Subsidies, medicaid, Medicare, New Primary Care Models, Patient Incentives, Patient-Centered Medical Home, Prediabetes, Prediabetes Screening, Preventive Health, Preventive Medicine, Public Awareness, Public Education, Ryan DuBosar, The Cost of Diabetes, U.S. Healthcare Spending, U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, UnitedHealth Group, USPSTF
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By 2020, an estimated 15 percent of adults will have diabetes and 37 percent will have prediabetes, a total of 39 million people, compared with rates of 12 percent and 28 percent today, respectively.
Today, more than 90 percent of people with prediabetes, and about a quarter of people with diabetes, are unaware of it, according to a report from UnitedHealth Group, the provider of insurance and other health care services.
The health savings alone of preventing diabetes would bend the cost curve of health care spending in the country. Health spending associated with diabetes and prediabetes is about $194 billion this year, or 7 percent of U.S. health spending, the report said. That cost is projected to rise to $500 billion by 2020, or a total of almost $3.4 trillion on diabetes-related care.
Engaging the at-risk population could save up to $250 billion, or 7.5 percent of estimated spending on diabetes and prediabetes, in the next decade. Of that money, $144 billion, or about 58 percent, would come from savings in Medicare, Medicaid and health care exchange subsidies. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
