The Health Care Blog

The Future of the Affordable Care Act: Unscathed by Attacks from the Right, Overtaken on its Left?

By ETIENNE DEFFARGES Having survived years of attacks from Republicans at the federal level, will the surviving ACA be rendered obsolete by Democrats’ local and state efforts towards universal health care? This could be an ironic twist of fate for Obamacare...

Published Thu, Jan 24 2019 7:57 AM by THCB

Filed under: Politics, Obamacare, Affordable Care Act, Health policy, Etienne Deffarges

The Perfect Storm: When Parkinson’s Patients Enter the Hospital

By HOOMAN AZMI MD, FAANS When a patient enters a hospital either in an elective or more urgent manner, the main focus of the care team is to address the chief complaint. Other diagnoses, while important, may not receive as much attention. While this may...

Published Wed, Jan 23 2019 6:31 AM by THCB

Filed under: Patients, Hospitals, Parkinson's Disease, Hooman Azmi, neurology, Hospital-related complications

Has U.S. Health Care Spending Finally Stabilized? An Outlook for 2019

By ETIENNE DEFFARGES The official 2017 statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) are out, and there are some good news: The annual growth rate of health care spending is slowing down, and is the lowest since 2013 at 3.9%...

Published Tue, Jan 22 2019 8:16 AM by THCB

Filed under: Medicare, Medicaid, Health insurance, Healthcare costs, Healthcare spending, Finance, Etienne Deffarges

Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 65 | Microsoft-Walgreens, Google, and HIMSS

Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess is braving the oncoming blizzard in Boston for MassChallenge. In this episode, Jess asks me about some crazy things happening in health tech, from the recently announced Microsoft-Walgreens partnership to compete with...

Published Mon, Jan 21 2019 7:40 AM by THCB

Filed under: Matthew Holt, HIMSS 2011, Amazon, Apple, Google, Health in 2 Point 00, Jessica DaMassa, MassChallenge, Fossil, Microsoft-Walgreens

A Bizarre Claim of Right to Try

By ARTHUR CAPLAN, KELLY MCBRIDE FOLKERS, and ANDREW MCFADYEN A patient with glioblastoma recently received an experimental cancer vaccine at the University of California, Irvine. Notably, this is being hailed as the first case of someone utilizing the...

Published Fri, Jan 18 2019 8:20 AM by THCB

Filed under: Patients, pharmaceuticals, FDA, Politics, Health policy, Donald Trump, Trump's Health, Right to Try Act, Arthur Caplan, ANDREW MCFADYEN, KELLY McBRIDE FOLKERS

Venture Capitalism & Radiology

By SAURABH JHA MD Can radiologists make their way to Silicon Valley? In this episode of Radiology Firing Line, Ajay Kohli MD, a physician entrepreneur, explains what it takes to make a medical app. Listen to our conversation here. Saurabh Jha is a contributing...

Published Thu, Jan 17 2019 6:56 AM by THCB

Filed under: Saurabh Jha, Radiology Firing Line Podcasts, Radiology Firing Line Podcast, Start-Ups, medical apps, physician entrepreneur

The Perfect Office Note? SOAP, APSO or aSOAP?

By HANS DUVEFELT MD I’ve been toying with this dilemma for a while: SOAP notes (Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan) are too long; APSO just jumbles the order, but the core items are still too far apart, with too much fluff in between. We need something...

Published Wed, Jan 16 2019 6:12 AM by THCB

Filed under: Physicians, EMR, Hans Duvefelt, Patient Notes

The Growing Problem of Military Suicides

By MSW@USC STAFF U.S. veterans are dying by suicide at an alarming pace. The national veteran suicide rate was almost 30 per 100,000 people in 2015, or about 20 deaths every day, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The age-adjusted rate of...

Published Tue, Jan 15 2019 7:36 AM by THCB

Filed under: Patients, veterans, veteran suicide, MSW@USC Staff, suicide rates

Despite Youth On Farm, Abbott Ventures Chief Avoids Spreading Manure

By MICHAEL MILLENSON Abbott Ventures chief Evan Norton may have spent part of his youth on a farm, but there’s no manure in his manner when speaking of the medical device and diagnostics market landscape. The key, he says, is to avoid being blindsided...

Published Mon, Jan 14 2019 7:19 AM by THCB

Filed under: Michael Millenson, Tech, Data, The Business of Health Care, Health Tech, Medical Devices, Health Data, Evan Norton, Abbott Ventures, OM Signal

Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 64 | J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

Today, for the first episode of Health in 2 Point 00 of 2019, Jess and I are reporting from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. In this episode, Jess asks me about the big news from the conference and whether there should be a second event in New York...

Published Sat, Jan 12 2019 12:10 PM by THCB

Filed under: Matthew Holt, Health in 2 Point 00, Jessica DaMassa, Livongo, J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

Net Effect of Expanding Medicaid

By SAURABH JHA MD What is the effect of expanding Medicaid on overall healthcare costs and use of the emergency room? This type of question can’t easily be answered by observational studies and requires a randomized controlled trial (RCT). But an...

Published Fri, Jan 11 2019 7:42 AM by THCB

Filed under: Medicaid, Health policy, Medicaid Expansion, Saurabh Jha, Radiology Firing Line Podcasts

Commissioning Healthcare Policy: Hospital Readmission and Its Price Tag

By ANISH KOKA MD The message comes in over the office slack line at 1:05 pm. There are four patients in rooms, one new, 3 patients in the waiting room. Really, not an ideal time to deal with this particular message. “Kathy the home care nurse for Mrs...

Published Thu, Jan 10 2019 6:47 AM by THCB

Filed under: Medicare, Hospitals, Health policy, Anish Koka, HRRP, MedPAC, hospital readmissions

Not Fake News! A Trump Administration Rule Models Government Civility

By MICHAEL L. MILLENSON A Trump administration regulation issued just hours before the partial federal shutdown offers quiet hope for civility in government. What happened, on its face, was simple: an update of the rules governing a particular Medicare...

Published Wed, Jan 09 2019 6:12 AM by THCB

Filed under: Medicare, Michael Millenson, CMS, ACOs, ACA, Health policy, Trump

New Study: Medicare’s Readmission Penalties May Be Killing Patients

By KIP SULLIVAN JD On the morning of December 21, I opened my copy of the New York Times to find an op-ed that said almost exactly what I had said in a two-part article The Health Care Blog posted two weeks earlier. The op-ed criticized the Hospital Readmissions...

Published Tue, Jan 08 2019 7:46 AM by THCB

Filed under: Congress, Medicare, CMS, Politics, value-based care, Kip Sullivan, MedPAC, Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program

Google Is Quietly Infiltrating Medicine — But What Rules Will It Play By?

By MICHAEL L. MILLENSON With nearly 80 percent of internet users searching online for health-related information, it’s no wonder the catchphrase “Dr. Google” has caught on, to the delight of many searchers and the dismay of many real doctors. What’s received...

Published Mon, Jan 07 2019 6:07 AM by THCB

Filed under: Physicians, Michael Millenson, Tech, Data, Apple, Health IT, Google, AI, Health Data

Syndication

Recent Posts

Tags

Archives