It sounds like every patient’s medical fantasy: Easy access to your doctor 24/7, same-day appointments, thorough and unrushed examinations, little to no time in the waiting room. The only downside is expense: To get this kind of personalized care from a primary doctor, you have to pay an annual fee, and forget about insurance covering….
Continue ReadingAccessibility of Healthcare
Heart Failure: An Expensive Revolving Door
Nobody wants to go home from the hospital only to be readmitted within a few weeks. But that revolving door is very common in conditions like heart failure, where the patient’s heart muscle doesn’t pump effectively after it has been weakened by heart attack or other heart disease. The open secret of the hospital industry….
Continue ReadingStroke: New Ideas for Delivering the Known Effective Therapies to Patients
Strokes cause more disability than just about any other disease, but they don’t have to. Effective treatments are known for the most common type of stroke; delivering them to the right patients has proven to be difficult. Now a group of researchers is proposing some changes in how stroke care is organized, with the hope….
Continue ReadingAmericans’ Health Care Suffers in Ailing Economy
In a newly released Thomson Reuters survey, one in five respondents say they have delayed medical care, and one in four of those who did listed financial cost as the primary reason, reports Maggie Fox of Reuters. The survey also predicted that in the next three months, one in every five adults in America will….
Continue ReadingInsurance Companies Deny Doctors’ Orders; Patients Suffer
The Toledo Blade has a good article with stories from patients whose crucial treatments, ordered by doctors, have been denied or delayed by insurance companies. It begins with the harrowing story of Randy Steele, who died after the kidney-liver transplant that could have saved his life was stalled by his insurer. Even if patients do….
Continue ReadingSenator Kennedy’s Health Care and Yours
It is instructive and interesting to read about Senator Edward Kennedy’s treatment for his brain tumor. The linked article describes the change in direction between May 20th of this year, when Kennedy’s brain cancer was first disclosed and surgery was not discussed as a possible treatment, and two weeks later, when neurosurgeons performed a “successful”….
Continue ReadingCancer Survival Depends on Country and Race
Unsurprisingly, there are wide global disparities in survival rates of cancer patients. This is partly because of the relative wealth of different countries. However, there are huge disparities within the United States as well: In the United States, the lowest survival rates are in New York City, except for rectal cancer in women, where Wyoming….
Continue ReadingRegion Affects Health Care Quality
Researchers at Dartmouth University have found striking regional differences in quality of health care. In addition, within any given region, black people are less likely to receive the appropriate health care than white people. But region was the strongest factor that affected quality of health care. From the article: For instance, the widest racial gaps….
Continue ReadingLos Angeles Sues Health Net for Insurance Cancellations
Rocky Delgadillo, the Los Angeles City Attorney, is suing the insurance company Health Net. Delgadillo accuses the company of using misleading forms to get customers to make errors or admissions that could then be used as an excuse for canceling their insurance policies when they need expensive treatments. From the article: The suit states that….
Continue ReadingHealthcare System Disadvantages Patients with Low Literacy Levels
The ScienceDaily pointed out recently that illiterate patients are at a serious disadvantage when it comes to getting proper healthcare, even to the point of having a higher mortality rate than literate patients. Another good discussion of the topic can be found in a July 24th, 2007 essay in the New York Times Health Section….
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