Hospitals May Have to Pay for Their Own Mistakes

As reported in this blog post from the Wall Street Journal, currently the state of California, and its MediCal program, is saddled with the cost of preventable hospital errors. A new bill has been introduced, AB 2146, where the government of California will stop reimbursement to hospitals for these avoidable mistakes based on Medicare’s no-pay list.

Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York, make up a list of some states that have already limited payments. Hospitals in Minnesota, Washington, and Vermont, have already accepted responsibility by stating that they will not request payment from patients for hospital errors.

Privately owned companies, such as Cigna and Wellpoint, have also announced that they will be following this trend, and refuse payment for specific mistakes.

What’s the Real Cost of Healthcare?

Trisha Torrey brings up a good point in her latest post on the Patient Empowerment Blog, the true cost of healthcare remains a mystery still to many patients.

First is the copay, then the insurance takes the rest of the doctors charges if the patient is insured. If there is a balance after the insurance has paid their stated amount, the patient is responsible for remainder of the payment. Costs are sometimes negotiated between insurance companies and doctors, but for those who don’t have insurance, negotiations are made between the patient and the doctor. So here’s a solution that can possibly help patients make wiser decisions when it comes to costs.

Change Healthcare is an online service that finds average costs of doctor visits, services, and what insurance companies typically negotiate with doctors. You can upload information about your own costs to the website. By sharing information, it is possible to help people in your area discover the true costs of healthcare.

New Vaccine for US Infants

The FDA has just approved a new vaccine, Pentacel, for the immunization of infants. As stated here at Pharmalot, it provides immunization for these five diseases: Haemophilus influenza type b (HIb), diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whopping cough) and poliomyelitis. The doses are given to infants at 2, 4, 6, and 15 to 18 months. This single shot four times can reduce as many as 23 injections otherwise needed for the immunization of infants.

According to this article here at HealthNews, the vaccine was approved after 5,000 infants in Canada and the United States showed that the vaccine was safe and effective against those diseases. This immunization has been used in Canada since 1997, and immunizations in the United States will begin this summer.

Safety Checklist to be Circulated

BBC News reports that a list compiled by the World Health Organization designed to cut the risk of surgical complications will be issued to doctors world-wide. This list is being compiled due to a Lancet study that found that safety measures across hospitals are commonly overlooked.

The Harvard School of Public Health has aided WHO in drawing up this list and its main aim is to reduce the following complications during surgery: preventable infections, preventable complication from bleeding, and safety in anesthesia. The list includes six very basic steps in surgical care including verification of the patient, ensuring that equipment is not neglected and left inside the patient, and administering an antibiotic before making an incision which reduces the risk of infection by at least 50%.

Worldwide, about one million people die a year following major surgery, so hopefully this list can serve an intervention to help prevent common mistakes made in surgical care.

Exercise Helps Battle Age Related Diseases

This latest NY Times article reports that as people age they lose muscle strength and flexibility, and as a result of this it leads to frailty in bones and a loss of mobility. According to Miriam Nelson, director of the John Hancock Center for Physical Activity and Nutrition at Tufts University, exercise is becoming increasingly important in improving quality of life and decreasing the risk of chronic age-related diseases.

A common misconception is that exercise will cause injury or pain, especially with those who suffer from arthritis, but the truth of the matter is that building muscle strength and their joints it will actually reduce pain and decrease the risk of injury. The perfect balance of physical fitness preferred includes aerobic workouts (cardio, swimming, treadmill, crosstrainer), stretching, and muscle training (which can be done in a gym with a series of machines, or dumbbells or resistance bands and tubes at home).

Emerging Trends & Opportunities for Healthcare Organizations to Leverage Web 2.0

As part of this blog, we want to bring you the latest up-to-date information in wellness, prevention, and disease management. In conjunction with the 13^th Annual Health Management Congress, we’ve put together a free web seminar with John Sharp from Cleveland Clinic entitled “Emerging Trends & Opportunities for Healthcare Organizations to Leverage Web 2.0”. I’d like to invite you to join us on Wednesday June 23, 2008 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM EDT.

Here’s a brief overview of the webinar:

The social-networking revolution is coming to health care, at the same time that new Internet technologies and software programs are making it easier than ever for consumers to find timely, personalized health information online. Patients who once connected mainly through email discussion groups and chat rooms are building more sophisticated virtual communities that enable them to share information about treatment and coping and build a personal network of friends. At the same time, traditional Web sites that once offered cumbersome pages of static data are developing blogs, podcasts, and customized search engines to deliver the most relevant and timely information on health topics.

What you will learn by attending:

• Improve care self-management using Web 2.0 strategies & resources
• Analyze the impact of Web 2.0 on healthcare stakeholders
• Leverage Web 2.0 content to drive traffic to your site and customers to your facility
• Explore the return on investment for these technologies

Take advantage of this free webinar and register now. Stay tuned to this blog for other updates on webinars within the healthcare industry.

Your Immune Cells May Help Treat Skin Cancer

This article in the NY Times that a man recently had a complete remission of melanoma, a deadly skin cancer, after treatment that boosted his immune system to fight the cancerous cells.

Doctors have long known that immune cells can effectively attack cancerous cells, but Dr. Steven Rosenberg of the National Cancer Institute recently took a different approach. Instead of focusing on the “T cells”, they decided to focus on specific helper T cells that help lock into the cancerous cells and guide the killer cells to fight off the bad cells. Researchers drew blood from 8 patients and grew more of the helper T cells in the laboratory. They later infused the patients with 5 billion of the cells back. After two months, one patient had no signs of tumors in his skin, and after two years he showed no symptoms.

More research is needed since only one of the eight patients who underwent the treatment survived.