February 19, 2012 at 5:11 pm By Roz Potter
From Scientific American: Link
A father’s story about the hospitalization of his 6 year old son for treatment of pneumonia, an illness made worse by these parents’ gamble that since it was unaffordable, health insurance wouldn’t be needed. Also, importantly, how the decision to do without health insurance adversely affected their judgement and decision-making, when their son became ill. This story is being played out all across America.
Excerpts:
I’m at Carteret General Hospital on North Carolina’s scenic Crystal Coast, where I live. My beautiful, precious 6 year old son was admitted this past Tuesday for Pneumonia. It started 6 days before on a Wednesday. He asked his kindergarten teacher if he could lay down. Odd behavior for such an outgoing kid, one of the class favorites who even at 6 already seems quite the ladies man… When I picked up him from school he was clearly exhausted and went to bed early without his dinner.
On Thursday we kept him home as he was obviously feverish and had flu like symptoms. He was getting worse, but then he tricked me on Sunday. He was looking a little better and was more responsive…
By Tuesday we weren’t left with any choice. My son had just gotten out of a bath and though he wasn’t cold, his hand and his feet were blue. I’d never seen it like that before. My wife laid it down and we were going to the Urgent Care. We all got dressed and heading over there early. He was miserable, crying in pain cause he couldn’t get enough oxygen. We were scared that we might have waited too long.
My poor decision-making capabilities in this regard was influenced by my lack of experience with any major disease (I have an immune system of steel, fortified by coffee and whisky), and our lack of insurance. My family includes four of the 49.1 million uninsured people in the United States. I’ve comforted myself that we couldn’t afford private insurance, which we can’t, but at least we were all relatively healthy and never seemed to have problems.
***
When I started my family 6 years ago, I was on a path to a career in research and teaching. We had amazing health insurance through my institution and my wife and children-to-be were generously covered, no-questions-asked by the state of Pennsylvania during, and a year after, the pregnancies. We never saw a bill. After I got “real jobs” upon completing my Masters degree, I entered a grey zone of contract teaching and research employment at universities. With a decent, regular salary we were ineligible for state aid, yet didn’t make enough to afford extra costs. Furthermore, the quality of the insurance kept lowering until I wasn’t even sure what I was paying for – even as the premium costs were rising.
The mindset of being uninsured is not , well… reassuring. It causes you to take risks that your peers do not need to take. It creates a perpetual fear that anything you do will eat up your life savings or kill you. Indeed, it has for us on one occasion. Nearly a decade ago when my wife was in constant pain for over a day, and after she could not take it anymore, I rushed her to emergency room. They had no clue, it was a worthless visit. They just looked at us dumbfounded and tried to get her to take antibacterials and be on her way. They even did unnecessary x-rays.
To read more, see Link
Posted in Child Health, Healthcare | No Comments »
October 18, 2011 at 12:49 am By Roz Potter
From the New York Times, Link
Excerpts:
After three years of study, the state’s legislative leaders appear close to producing bills that would make Massachusetts the first state — again — to radically revamp the way doctors, hospitals and other health providers are paid.
Although important details remain to be negotiated, the legislative leaders and Gov. Deval Patrick, all Democrats, are working toward a plan that would encourage flat “global payments” to networks of providers for keeping patients well, replacing the fee-for-service system that creates incentives for excessive care by paying for each visit and procedure.
“We have shown the nation how to extend care to everybody,” Mr. Patrick said in an interview, “and we’ll be the place to crack the code on costs.”
Those who led the 2006 effort to expand coverage readily acknowledge that they deferred the more daunting task of cost control for another day. It was assumed then that the politics would pit doctors, hospitals, insurers, employers and consumers against one another, and obliterate the fragile coalition behind the groundbreaking coverage law.
***
Because medical spending is driven not just by volume but also by pricing, a major question has been whether global payments alone will have much effect. It may be equally important, Mr. Patrick and others argue, to rein in the ability of the state’s most prestigious teaching hospitals and physicians’ groups to negotiate high rates of reimbursement.
A series of news media and government investigations have revealed that large, high-status providers, like Partners HealthCare System, which owns the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General and Brigham & Women’s hospitals, command substantially higher reimbursement from insurers than other entities.
In reports the last two years, Attorney General Martha Coakley, a Democrat, has concluded that differences in payments to hospitals cannot be explained by variations in their quality, the mix of their patients or the costs of academic medicine.
To read more, Link
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September 19, 2011 at 4:21 pm By Roz Potter
From the NYT: Link
Excerpts:
A medical privacy breach led to the public posting on a commercial Web site of data for 20,000 emergency room patients at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., including names and diagnosis codes, the hospital has confirmed. The information stayed online for nearly a year.
Since discovering the breach last month, the hospital has been investigating how a detailed spreadsheet made its way from one of its vendors, a billing contractor identified as Multi-Specialty Collection Services, to a Web site called Student of Fortune, which allows students to solicit paid assistance with their schoolwork.
Gary Migdol, a spokesman for Stanford Hospital and Clinics, said the spreadsheet first appeared on the site on Sept. 9, 2010, as an attachment to a question about how to convert the data into a bar graph.
***
The spreadsheet included names, diagnosis codes, account numbers, admission and discharge dates, and billing charges for patients seen at Stanford Hospital’s emergency room during a six-month period in 2009, Mr. Migdol said. It did not include Social Security numbers, birth dates, credit-card numbers or other information used to perpetrate identity theft, he said, but the hospital is offering free identity protection services to affected patients.
***
Records compiled by the Department of Health and Human Services reveal that personal medical data for more than 11 million people have been improperly exposed during the past two years alone.
Posted in Healthcare, Internet Safety, Privacy | No Comments »
December 11, 2010 at 11:44 am By Roz Potter
At least part of the answer may be found in an article posted on the Consumer Reports blog, link. Four consumer groups have filed a complaint with the FTC, alleging that companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Web MD, HealthCentral and others may be collecting private medical information and using it in ways that puts individual privacy at risk.
Anyone who does online searching to acquire information about a medical condition should read the article.
Posted in Health, Healthcare, Privacy | No Comments »
October 15, 2010 at 1:32 am By Roz Potter
From USATODAY.
Snip: The National Commission on Children and Disasters found that even under normal circumstances, most ambulances and emergency rooms are not prepared to care for severely injured children. “If you think of a disaster, there may be hundreds of thousands of kids who need medical care,and you’ll be putting them in an environment where they don’t have the experience or equipment to care for kids”.
http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/pediatrics/2010-10-07-1Akidcrisis07_ST_N.htm
Posted in Child Health, Child Safety, Disaster preparedness, Healthcare | No Comments »
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