MedscapeToday.com Robert Lowes September 10, 2014 The dramatic federal bust in April 2013 of a Chicago hospital and some of its physicians yielded its first prison term last week, and a light one at that. A federal district judge sentenced 74-year-old urologist Subir Maitra, MD, to 6 months behind bars after he pleaded guilty earlier […]
BMJ Open. 2014 Aug 27;4(8):e005332. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2014-005332. A 6-year comparative economic evaluation of healthcare costs and mortality rates of Dutch patients from conventional and CAM GPs. Baars EW, Kooreman P. Abstract OBJECTIVES: To compare healthcare costs and mortality rates of Dutch patients with a conventional (CON) general practitioner (GP) and patients with a GP who […]
MedPage Today by Parker Brown August 22, 2014 Overweight patients with type 2 diabetes who were assigned diet and exercise goals reduced their healthcare costs by an average of more than $500 a year, a study found. Over 10 years, their costs were 7% less than those given diabetes support and education alone, according to […]
Erin McCann, Managing Editor The way IT is designed remains part of the problem WASHINGTON | July 18, 2014 It’s a chilling reality – one often overlooked in annual mortality statistics: Preventable medical errors persist as the No. 3 killer in the U.S. – third only to heart disease and cancer – claiming the lives […]
by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica May 29, 2014 Medicare spent $6.7 billion too much for office visits and other patient evaluations in 2010, according to a new report from the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But in its reply to the findings, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs Medicare, […]
By Jenny Gold January 6, 2014 What will a gallon of milk set you back? How about a new car? You probably have a rough idea. But what about a medical device — the kind that gets implanted during a knee or hip replacement? Chances are you have no clue. And you are not alone: The […]
Forbes.com PHARMA & HEALTHCARE 9/23/2013 @ 8:50AM 25,722 views In 1999, Americans learned that 98,000 people were dying every year from preventable errors in hospitals. That came from a widely touted analysis by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) called To Err Is Human. This was the “Silent Spring” of the health care world, grabbing headlines for […]
Robert Lowes August 09, 2013 Hematologist-oncologist Farid Fata, MD, in suburban Detroit, Michigan, was arrested August 6 and charged with Medicare fraud in a federal case that stands out from dozens of others recently brought against healthcare providers. For one thing, the dollar amount of alleged fraud — $35 million — is higher than most for individual […]
Medscape.com Robert Lowes April 18, 2013 Two executives of a hospital in Chicago, Illinois, along with 3 physicians and a podiatrist were arrested by federal agents April 16 for allegedly conspiring to give and receive illegal kickbacks for referring Medicare and Medicaid patients in a case built with “wired” colleagues who had flipped for law […]
J Health Care Finance. 2012 Fall;39(1):39-50. The economics of health care quality and medical errors. Andel C, Davidow SL, Hollander M, Moreno DA. Abstract Hospitals have been looking for ways to improve quality and operational efficiency and cut costs for nearly three decades, using a variety of quality improvement strategies. However, based on recent reports, […]