Up to a third of medical spending goes for over-treatment and over-testing, with an estimated $200 billion in the U.S. expended on medical services with little benefit to patients. But getting doctors and hospitals to stop this waste isn’t easy, nor is it a snap to get patients to understand what this problem’s all about….
Continue ReadingOutpatient Care
As medical costs climb, it’s not just drip, drip waste, look at hospital bloat, too
Whether it happens in the drip, drip, drip of costly eye drops or it occurs in the flash of a pricey imaging scan, patients get gouged by modern medicine’s wasteful practices. The inefficiencies can be traced to many and different causes. But Americans need to keep asking whether they can allow or tolerate profit-seeking enterprises….
Continue ReadingPlastic surgery patients don’t need surgeons who are social media clowns
Social media have become a “circus” for some plastic and cosmetic surgeons to clown around in unprofessional ways, including: videos in which one doctor has cradled fat removed from a tummy-tuck like an infant and put a baby face on it using a Snapchat filter. Other costumed surgeons have posted visual displays of themselves dancing….
Continue ReadingFlooding staggers Texas medical system
Houston’s medical system was staggered, but it stood up to the pounding inflicted by Hurricane Harvey’s winds and rains. But for the millions of residents of the nation’s fourth largest city huge challenges will persist for some time to their health and well-being. Texans’ tragedies may offer us painful reminders we should heed about planning and….
Continue ReadingMedical care extremes: cost cutting in the Carolinas, gouging in Florida
Hospitals and health systems are making stark choices between offering models to assist their communities and reduce medical costs−or raking in profits, no matter how outrageous and shame-provoking their charges might be. Evidence of the extremes came this week in reports about alternative realities. Let’s start with the positive view, recognizing exemplary efforts in the Charlotte,….
Continue ReadingHow tough is it to cut health care costs? Two cases show the challenges
Two new case studies show how hard it is to cut the gigantic costs of America’s medical industry. The first concerns how tinkering with Medicare payment incentives can drive up some already soaring drug costs. The other revisits how retail clinics that have popped up at chain drug stores affect health care spending. Medicare drug incentives….
Continue ReadingSuper-sized cancer drug doses lead to $3 billion in waste
It’s one thing when the makers of sodas or breakfast cereals tweak their packaging to maximize their profits. But Big Pharma deserves a slap for its practice, newly spotlighted by researchers, of putting out over-sized dosages of cancer fighting drugs. This ensures that $3 billion in already costly drugs get tossed out and wasted each year…..
Continue ReadingMy Date with a Wearable Heart Monitor
Here’s another device you probably don’t need. Or do you? That’s the question Austin Frakt, who writes for the New York Times, tried to answer for himself when his cardiologist told him that one of his heart’s chambers sometimes pumped when it shouldn’t. The doctor had been “99.9% certain” that it wasn’t worrisome, and doctor….
Continue ReadingDirty Instruments Pose Threat to Outpatients, Too
Earlier this year, both patients and providers were shocked when a rash of hospital patients got seriously ill or died after medical devices used to examine their gastrointestinal tracts infected them because they were not sufficiently cleaned after previous use. Now, it seems, inpatients aren’t the only ones who need to worry about contaminated medical….
Continue ReadingWhistleblowers — and Taxpayers — Win Lawsuit over Medicare Fraud
Here’s another story with a satisfying ending and the take-home lesson that it’s a bad idea to cheat taxpayers and abuse medical resources. A chain of hospices agreed to settle a lawsuit over its overbilling of Medicare, and driving up payments by providing care to patients for whom it wasn’t appropriate. St. Joseph Hospice, which….
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