March 2011 - The Health Care Blog

The 6th Thing to Watch in the Medicare ACO Regulations

By VINCE KURATIS Health care lobbyists and advocates are bracing for six pages of the health care reform law to explode into more than 1,000 pages of federal regulations when the Department of Health and Human Services releases its long-delayed accountable...

Published Wed, Mar 30 2011 4:17 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, ACOs

Nurses: Protocol -ed to Extinction?

By SARAH BETH COWHERD If you have been at your nursing job for a while, you’ve probably almost forgotten. Forgotten what it was like to come in to the healthcare system you now work for and realize there are hundreds of new protocols for you to learn...

Published Tue, Mar 08 2011 6:11 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Nursing, Nurses, Protocols, Sarah Beth Cowherd

Perspective

By KIMBERLY MANNING, MD “I can’t sleep, doc.” “Really?” “Yeah. And it ain’t like I ain’t sleepy, either. I just be sitting there. Just up and bored.” “Tell me about your evenings.” “I...

Published Thu, Mar 10 2011 6:32 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Hospitals, Internal Medicine, Grady Medical Center, cardiology

The Incredible and Wasteful Complexity of the US Healthcare System

By HUMPHREY TAYLOR and IAN MORRISON During the health care reform debate, we wrote that most people’s attitudes to it were “confused, conflicted, clueless and cranky.” A major reason was that the American health care “system” is fiendishly complicated...

Published Thu, Mar 24 2011 7:03 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Regulation, Harris Poll, Complexity, US Healthcare system, Doughnut Hole

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

By KIMBERLEY MANNING, MD On May 19, 1996, I graduated from medical school. And although I look and seem ridiculously youthful (I know, that’s what you were saying) it’s been–as my patients at Grady like to say–”a mi-nute”...

Published Sun, Mar 27 2011 10:37 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB

A Growing Chorus on the RUC

By BRIAN KLEPPER Yesterday on Kaiser Health News, Barbara Levy MD, the Chair of the AMA’s Relative Value Scale Update Committee (or RUC), published a glowing defense of the RUC’s activities. Her article extols the work of the 29 physician...

Published Tue, Mar 29 2011 12:42 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB

Defined Contribution Health Care—The Conservatives’ Silver Bullet

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI Conservatives are in a full court press these days telling us the answer to America’s out-of-control health care costs—and our fiscal crisis—is to move Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax code subsidy for private insurance to a defined...

Published Tue, Mar 01 2011 7:30 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Robert Laszewski, Front Page, Conservatives, Defined contribution

A Speed Bump on the Road to Meaningful Use

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE Meaningful Use has hit a speed bump. It’s of the low, wide and gentle type, not the old raggedy, narrow and mean bump you find in older parking lots. Now that a tentative proposal for Meaningful Use Stage 2 has been published by ONC...

Published Mon, Mar 14 2011 2:29 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Meaningful Use, ONC, Stages, Margalit Gur-Aire, NIST

Not So Fast – Why It Pays to Wait Until FY 2012 on Meaningful Use

By PROTIMA ADVANI The registration process and reporting period for the meaningful use incentive program officially commenced on Jan. 3. More than 21,000 health care providers have registered to date and many more are ramping up efforts to meet meaningful...

Published Tue, Mar 15 2011 12:36 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Meaningful Use, Potima Advani

The Inspector General Observes

By PAUL LEVY A recent report by the Massachusetts Inspector General raises a thoughtful concern about the implementation of global payments in the state. In the effort to contain health care costs, much discourse has centered on moving from a predominantly...

Published Thu, Mar 17 2011 10:41 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Paul Levy, Massachusetts, ACOs, Global payments, AQC

Bias And How to Deal With It

By DERICK LOWE, PHD The coverage of the Japanese reactor situation reminds me of the coverage of many other technical issues when they overlap with serious breaking news stories. I wrote a little on this subject a few years ago, talking about the Merck...

Published Thu, Mar 17 2011 12:15 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Bias, Japanese reactor, Media, Derick Lowe

Conflicts Of Interest In Guideline Development: A Dirty Little Secret Gets Aired Again

By DAVID WILLIAMS An Archives of Internal Medicine article (Conflicts of Interest in Cardiovascular Clinical Practice Guidelines) is getting a lot of notice today. In essence, many of the physicians who develop guideline that influence practice patterns...

Published Thu, Mar 31 2011 4:19 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Quality, NIH, cardiology, Conflict of interest, Guidelines, Eli Lilly, Archives of Internal Medicine