Report calls for health payment changes
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Quality not quantity should be the federal government's guide in setting payments to doctors, hospitals and other health care providers, a report requested by Congress said Thursday.
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The discovery that antidepressants  may increase suicidal tendencies in children has prompted some  lawmakers and physicians to ask if changes are needed to  financial incentives given to drug makers for pediatric  research.
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Â· Unanimous backing for action on public sector pay  Â· Postal workers announce new wave of disruption
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Authors of a public-health article in this week&#39;s issue of THE LANCET (p 1984) are calling for urgent international action to address the chronic lack of investment in human resources which is limiting the chance of tackling diseases such as HIV/AIDS
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A new study presents stark evidence that high medical payments do not buy high-quality patient care.
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Care for people with chronic disease must be improved, a manifesto published by leading health organisations says
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WASHINGTON - Requiring doctors and hospitals to report publicly on their performance and tying their pay to the results would dramatically reduce avoidable deaths and costs attributable to poor medical care, says a new report from an organization that
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The Australian Medical Association has called on the federal government&#39;s health and research council to revise its guidelines on alcohol consumption by pregnant women.
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New estimates for Medicare's prescription drug benefit prompted members of Congress to demand changes in the law before the benefit becomes available next year.
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Requiring doctors and hospitals to report publicly on their performance and tying their pay to the results would dramatically reduce avoidable deaths and costs attributable to poor medical care, says a new report from an organization that works to improve health care quality.    Wild variations in medical care led to 79,000 avoidable deaths and $1.8 billion in additional medical costs last year, the private National Committee for Quality Assurance said in its annual report released Wednesday...
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Hoping to jumpstart workers&#39; compensation reforms, the Schwarzenegger administration yesterday introduced a new set of regulations to change how doctors evaluate injured workers and how much money the workers receive.
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Health Minister George Smitherman has opened up another front in the battle over health-care costs, declaring wages paid to hospital workers are too high.
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The U.S. Congress needs to pass healthcare IT legislation before private companies develop multiple systems that don&#39;t talk to each other, two advocacy groups said Tuesday.Members of the Health IT Now Coalition and the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) urged Congress to move ahead with health IT legislation such as the Promoting Health Information Technology Act. The bill would establish a public/private group to recommend health IT standards and certification and would budget $163 million a year for health-care providers to adopt health IT products, such as electronic health records.Health technologies can help improve healthcare quality, reduce costs and encourage changes in treatment, said former U.S. Representative Nancy Johnson, co-chairwoman of the Health IT Now Coalition.Health IT is &quot;going to produce radical change,&quot; Johnson said at a news conference. &quot;It&#39;s going to radically improve the quality of health care that Americans receive.&quot;With health-care costs continuing to climb, moving to an electronic system that reduces paper and medical errors is the best hope to extend health care to U.S. residents who are uninsured, she added. &quot;It is the only way that we guarantee to Americans of every age that our health-care system will continue to deliver the state-of-the-art medicine for which it has been known worldwide,&quot; Johnson said.The Promoting Health Information Technology Act has stalled in the House of Representatives and a similar piece of legislation, the Wired for Health Care Quality Act, has stalled in the Senate.Some groups, including Patient Privacy Rights, have raised concerns that the legislation doesn&#39;t adequately address patient privacy issues. &quot;The Senate Wired Act has no privacy protections or language ensuring patient control of health records,&quot; the group said on its Web site. &quot;It must not pass unless patients have the right to keep their health records private.&quot;Privacy and security must be major components of a health IT bill, Johnson said at the news conference. But she and Rhett Dawson, ITI&#39;s president and CEO, said Congress should pass a health IT bill before vendors develop multiple systems that don&#39;t interoperate. &quot;The public interest is in interoperability,&quot; Johnson said.A health IT bill would be a major accomplishment that lawmakers could show to voters before the November elections, Dawson said. &quot;We believe the time to act is now,&quot; he added.In addition to the news conference, a group of IT vendors, including Lexmark, NetApp and NCR, demonstrated health technologies at a congressional office building on Tuesday.EMC&#39;s RSA division demonstrated secure Web sign-on technologies that patients and health-care providers can use. RSA&#39;s Secure Web Access for Patient and Provider Portals allows administrators to set access rights based on who&#39;s signing in, said Seth Geftic, RSA product marketing manger. For example, a doctor could have access to more patient records than a nurse or an insurance provider, he said.In addition, RSA provides authentication technologies that can be used to recognize users when they first sign in. For example, the RSA Adaptive Authentication can use publicly available information, such as height, car loans and old addresses, to authenticate a user entering a health IT Web site for the first time, Geftic said.&quot;You don&#39;t even have to enter the last four digits of your Social Security number,&quot; added Shannon Kellogg, director of information security policy in EMC&#39;s office of government relations.
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TORONTO -- Post-partum depression clinics, breastfeeding clinics and other vital women&#39;s health services are on the chopping block as the province demands that hospitals balance their budgets next year, advocates warned yesterday.
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A federal advisory panel recommended sweeping changes to Medicaid to rein in costs, including greater use of managed care for the sickest recipients.
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CONCORD, NH -- Federal health officials posed several questions to the state Thursday about proposed Medicaid changes. Health authorities want to know how the state would set limits on care, how it would decide
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To cope with rising health care costs, companies are asking current retirees to pay more for health insurance and some are telling future retirees to do without, according to a study released yesterday.