DoD takes steps to expand use of telehealth services By Fred Bazzoli Published January 11 2018, in Health Data Management The Department of Defense is expanding its ability to deliver telehealth services to active duty military personnel, veteran and their families by designating a provider of telemedicine services to operate on its networks. The agency… Read More
This January 1, 2018 New York Times article outlines how the push for better outcome scores puts patient care at risk. The story recounts stories where a “nurse in charge of enforcing administration restrictions said the patient was not sick enough to qualify for admission to the hospital.” Excerpts from the article include The denial… Read More
Georgia based Gwinnett Medical Center has developed an innovative solution in response to the growing number of psychiatric patients coming into its two hospitals’ emergency departments. They noted an annual increase of 20% over the last several years while only having a 1% overall increase in total ED visits. In response to this situation Gwinnett will… Read More
This is potentially a landmark study published in the October 18, 2017 issue of JAMA Psychiatry that looks at whether a monthly injection of naltrexone (Vivitrol (TM)) is as effective as daily buprenorphine-naloxone (Suboxone(TM)). This study concluded that in the short-term Monthly naltrexone shots (Vivitrol) worked as well as daily buprenorphine/naloxone (Suboxone) for treating opioid… Read More
A Medscape poll published October 2, 2017 reports that he majority of healthcare professionals said they have been experienced and been the victims of verbal and physical violence in the work place. This study surveyed nearly 2400 healthcare workers, including nurses, physicians, pharmacists and other providers, about workplace violence following the death of Tracy Sin-Yee… Read More
Insurers and employers are increasingly moving to high-deductible health plans to control costs but this is not necessarily good for the healthcare system nor patients. Now a new alternative is being proposed called the Medical Episode Spending Allowance ( MESA ) plan. According to a University of Minnesota recent study: The number of American workers… Read More
From the October 2, 2017 Guardian which has a very interesting visual of the results of mass shootings The attack at a country music festival in Las Vegas that left at least 58 people dead is the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history – but there were six other mass shootings in America this… Read More
In Season 2 Episode 3 Adam examines how arbitrarily inflated hospital costs have contributed to the confusion in healthcare. His theory includes a collaboration of the insurance companies and hospitals to avoid transparency of pricing. Links to the video on truTV. Sources “Oh, American health care isn’t the best in the world. But despite that… Read More
This article takes an interesting look at whether the “reputation” of your medical school affects your propensity to write opiate prescriptions. This paper published July 7, 2017 by economics professors at Princeton University (seems like some Harvard bias), determined that physicians who studied at “lower-ranked” medical schools prescribe nearly three times as many opioids per… Read More
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