Insurance Superintendent Eric R. Dinallo and Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines, M.D. announced today the members of the Medical Malpractice Liability Task Force, charged by Governor Eliot Spitzer with identifying the fundamental causes of high medical malpractice costs and proposing solutions. The task force includes organizations representing the stakeholders: consumers, the business community, doctors and other health professionals, hospitals, health plans, medical malpractice insurers and lawyers. It also includes members of the State Legislature.The task force will help define the major causes of medical malpractice and of the high cost of insurance. It will also be asked to help collect data that can be used to clearly identify the major cost drivers and to evaluate benefits of proposed solutions. The task force will work to achieve agreement on short-term and long-term reforms.

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EMRs effectively reduce the time required to delve into patient charts to obtain information and nursing documentation. With clinicians spending less time filing and searching for data, patient satisfaction is subsequently increased. This has indirectly led to savings to most healthcare practices. Further, EMRs reduce the supply costs by a high margin within a hospital setting, where the storage and supply costs are generally high.

“EMRs can enable healthcare providers to efficiently manage overhead expenses and improve revenues with complete reimbursement for services,” finds Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst, Pramodh Ishwarakrishnan. “This allows providers to effectively respond to evolving conditions without succumbing to market pressures.”

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The doctor walked into the hospital room with a discomforting mission. He was there to admit a medical mistake and apologize to his patient, a woman with breast cancer.

The staff had given her the same injection twice by accident, causing her white cell count to soar, said Dr. Divyesh Mehta, chief of oncology at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center. He recommended she stay in the hospital an extra day or two.

“This is our responsibility, and we are very sorry for it,” Mehta said, recalling the conversati

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For the first time, organizations that represent medical institutions are developing policies to bring an end to medical secrecy in Canada, eventually making disclosing medical errors a routine part of medical care.

Ontario leads the way, with changes to legislation moving through the Legislature that will make the records of all health professionals available to the public.

Patients will be able find out if a physician is under investigation, has been accused of medical malpractice or professional negligence, and whether disciplinary action has been taken against a care provider or limits placed on a physician’s licence.

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Under the rule, Medicare no longer will reimburse hospitals for the treatment of certain “conditions that could reasonably have been prevented,” and the facilities “cannot bill the beneficiary for any charges associated with the hospital-acquired complication” (Pear, New York Times, 8/19).

The eight conditions for which Medicare no longer will reimburse hospitals for treatment include: falls; mediastinitis, an infection that can develop after heart surgery; urinary tract infections that result from improper use of catheters; pressure ulcers; and vascular infections that result from improper use of catheters. In addition, the conditions include three “never events”: objects left in the body during surgery, air embolisms and blood incompatibility (USA Today, 8/20).

The rule, proposed by CMS in April and mandated by a 2005 law, will take effect in October 2008. CMS officials said that next year they plan to add three additional conditions to the list (Zhang, Wall Street Journal, 8/20).

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This year, Congress had to consider reauthorization of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), which it must do every 5 years. Under PDUFA, the major funding for the review of new drugs by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) comes from user fees paid by pharmaceutical companies. This mechanism has been controversial because, although it was designed to accelerate the drug-approval process and can make new drugs available to patients without delay, it has directed no money to the postmarketing assessment of drug safety. In addition, some believe that user fees pose a conflict of interest for the FDA. Nonetheless, to ensure that the FDA has adequate financial resources, both the House and the Senate versions of the bill not only maintain these user fees but increase them (with some of the money now directed to safety assessment).

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Michael Moore’s new film “Sicko,” a scathing indictment of America’s broken health-care system, provides powerful fuel to our nation’s growing movement for comprehensive health-care reform.

“Sicko” documents the perverse circumstances and tragic consequences of the fact that the people of the United States lack what most of the developed world already has: a universal health-care system that recognizes health care as a fundamental human right, not a privilege of class or income status.

“Sicko” also points to the ultimate solution for our health-care crisis: a publicly financed, single-payer, health-care system of the kind long favored by SEIU United Healthcare Workers – West; a system that contains costs and improves quality by doing away with the extreme inefficiencies and inappropriate incentives associated with the dominance of private, for-profit insurance interests in American health care.

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Former Missouri Insurance Commissor Jay Angoff analyzed the financial statements of the 15 largest medical malpractice insurance companies in the U.S. His report found there was no basis for high insurance rates. The 15 largest insurers paid out an average of 31.4 cents in claims for every dollar they collected in 2006. That means that for every $1 that a hospital or health care provider paid in insurance premiums, insurance companies were able to keep 68.6 cents, using that money to fund executive salaries, marketing and advertising, and lawyers and lobbyists, among other things. What the companies didn’t spend on those things, they continued to hold in reserve. There is no reason why doctors shouldn’t fight back at their own insurance companies and demand rate rollbacks.

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First, 47 million Americans, including 8 million children, have no health insurance coverage. In 1987 the uninsured totaled 32 million. In two decades, we’ve seen nearly a 50% rise in those without health insurance.

Second, Medicare and Medicaid costs threaten to bankrupt the country. Today’s elderly are now on average receiving more than $15,000 per year from these programs. When all 77 million baby boomers are fully retired, the average benefit will exceed $25,000, in today’s dollars, if benefit growth is not restrained. The two programs’ inflation-adjusted annual costs will run close to $1.5 trillion.

These huge pending annual healthcare costs are largely responsible for the roughly $70 trillion fiscal gap, in present value, separating projected federal expenditures and receipts. This fiscal gap provides the true measure of our nation’s indebtedness, because it puts all future obligations, implicit and explicit on an equal footing. Seventy trillion dollars is a whole lot of money, even in an economy as large as ours. It goes well beyond anything the nation can pay.

The third healthcare crisis involves enormous healthcare obligations facing employers, many of whom are drowning in healthcare bills. General Motors, for instance, is sitting on a $15 billion healthcare liability that may ultimately spell its bankruptcy.

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Posted from Alternet:

The idea of letting states continue to take the lead on universal health care may sound tempting, but here’s why it would likely be disastrous.

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