New hepatitis C treatments are both staggeringly effective and expensive. This has sparked a nationwide discussion about the high cost of specialty drugs and how such costs are keeping patients from needed treatments. Prescribing data may offer new insights.
Starting in 2007, California’s hospital administrative penalties program was designed to bring greater accountability to hospitals that commit “never events” and put patients in immediate jeopardy. So, what does the data tell us about how well it's working?
Medicare marked its 50th anniversary earlier this year, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to celebrate for the popular public program. The youngest Baby Boomers will turn 65 in 2030, the beginning of a demographic tsunami made will also see seniors living longer and with more disabilities and chronic
Nevada is serving a greater number of mentally ill children in recent years. “This is an epidemic,” said Dr. Jay Fisher. Decades ago, he said, physicians looked to vaccines to preventing epidemics. “This is going to be much more difficult to solve. It’s a 12-headed beast.”
Patients receiving blood transfusions are at risk of infection with Chagas disease, a tropical illness, according to an investigation by The Dallas Morning News and broadcast partner KXAS-TV.
These seven tropical diseases are closer to home than you think. Lurking in Dallas-area backyards is Chagas disease, caused by a parasite that infects more than 300,000 Americans. The disease can cause heart failure and death in humans and dogs and is often missed by doctors.
The digital revolution has been a boon to reporting. But turning paper into digital files is not the same as making them freely available online, and major obstacles persist. The National Practitioner Data Bank offers a particularly egregious example.
If she hadn’t gone to donate blood, Candace Stark wouldn’t have discovered that she harbored a dangerous parasite. Although she hadn’t left Texas in 20 years, swimming in her blood was a tropical parasite that causes a disease called Chagas.
As physicians, we can find evidence in the research literature to support or discourage almost anything. If we don't have a coherent approach to care, it's quite difficult to decide when we have sufficient evidence to change our practice.
The rising prevalence of "narrow" health insurance networks has set off alarms. But do such networks keep patients from getting good care? Not necessarily. The more relevant question is whether a provider network is adequate or not.
