March 28th, 2011 by DrWes in Health Policy
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In case people are wondering if our governmental overlords really care about the latest and greatest treatment guidelines published by our professional health care organizations, take note.
CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) is still using guidelines for defibrillator implantation from 2005 to justify payment for services in their national coverage decision, whereas the latest guidelines published by the Heart Rhythm Society published in 2008 carry signficiant differences in their recommendations for appropriate patients for this technology.
So which set of guidelines should doctors use?
The answer is obvious: if you use the latest data to decide who should receive a defibrillator, you might be subject to a Department of Justice investigation.
So much for using updated guidelines.
-WesMusings of a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist.
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
March 28th, 2011 by PJSkerrett in Health Tips, News
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The condition that took Elizabeth Taylor’s life affects millions of Americans.
Reports of Elizabeth Taylor’s death focused, as they should, on her life, not on her death from heart failure. But given how common this condition is—the American Heart Association says nearly 6 million Americans are living with heart failure and it kills about 300,000 each year—a little attention to it might be a good idea.
What is heart failure?
The term “heart failure” is a scary one, conjuring up images of a heart that is suddenly unable to work. In truth, it represents a gradual decline in the heart’s ability to pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs. As the heart weakens, all parts of the body suffer the consequences. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
March 27th, 2011 by AndrewSchorr in Expert Interviews
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If you follow me regularly, you know I enjoy watching the Fox television drama House M.D. on Monday nights (although I often watch the recording later in the week). Doctor Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) is a sorry character but a terrific diagnostician. In almost every episode someone is on the brink of death from an elusive illness when House’s “light bulb” goes on and, in a flash, he saves the patient’s life by proving himself to being the world’s best medical detective.
Doc Hollywood???
Dr. Lisa Sanders is watching 3,000 miles away in New Haven, Connecticut where she teaches first and second year med students at Yale how to learn to be House-type medical detectives – but much more respectful ones. She is like that herself. She’s so good at it she writes a medical column for The New York Times Magazine. That column was actually the inspiration for the television show. And it won Dr. Sanders a job as technical adviser on the medical drama. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
March 27th, 2011 by Lucy Hornstein, M.D. in Health Tips, True Stories
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There’s a new scam in town.
Company calls over and over again (claiming to be the phone company, actually) just wanting to “verify your address”. Over and over again they get told we aren’t interested, leave us alone, don’t call. Finally, my solitary staffer gets sick of fending them off and goes through their voice activated “address verification”, during which a mechanical voice asks questions, followed by a command to “Say Yes or No, then press the pound key.”
So she goes through the innocuous questions, including her full name, the office address and phone number, plus several iterations of saying “Yes or No, then press pound.” The calls stop; everyone is happy.
Until I get the phone bill six weeks later. Lo and behold, there is an extra $49.99 charge (plus tax) from a company I never heard of. Multiple phone calls reveal it to be a company providing “Internet optimization, web services, and a toll free number,” stuff I neither need nor want. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Dinosaur*
March 27th, 2011 by DrRich in Health Policy, Opinion
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In 2008, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it would no longer pay for the treatment of “never events,” i.e., certain medical conditions in hospitalized patients which the Feds deem to be universally avoidable under all circumstances. These conditions included:
* Decubitus ulcers
* Two kinds of catheter-associated infections
* Air embolism
* Mediastinitis after coronary bypass surgery
* Transfusing patients with the wrong blood type
* Leaving objects inside surgery patients
* In-hospital falls
Then, having been delighted with the results of its original list (or dismayed that healthcare costs continued to skyrocket despite its original list) CMS subsequently proposed declaring several new conditions as “never events,” including: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Covert Rationing Blog*
