By Shefali Luthra – Private health insurance plans in 2017 paid more than twice what Medicare would have for those same health care services, says a sweeping new study from Rand Corp., a respected research organization.
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By Shefali Luthra – In an almost uniform response to the impending exit of Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, city and county public health officials are urging the Trump administration to go bigger in its response to adolescents’ growing use of e-cigarettes.
By Shefali Luthra – It’s 4 p.m., and if you’re a hospital patient, that could be one of the most critical times of the day. Your doctor’s shift just ended, and someone new will take over your care. How these professionals communicate could have major repercussions for your recovery. Those shift changes, also known as handoffs, are prime opportunities for key information about a patient’s condition to get lost in the shuffle.
By Shefali Luthra – When it comes to hospitals, which benefit most from high health care prices? It may sound counter-intuitive, but a group of not-for-profit hospitals appear to be among those doing the best business.
By Shefali Luthra – Medical errors are estimated to be the third-highest cause of death in the country. Experts and patient safety advocates are trying to change that. But at least one of the tools that’s been considered a fix isn’t yet working as well as it should, suggests a report released on April 7, 2016.
By Shefali Luthra – In a perfect world, patients with advance directives would be confident that their doctors and nurses, no matter where they receive care, could know in a split second their end-of-life wishes. But this ideal is still in the distance. Patients’ documents often go missing in maze-like files or are rendered unreadable by incompatible software.
By Shefali Luthra – A growing number of primary care doctors, spurred by the federal health law and frustrations with insurance requirements, are bringing a service that generally has been considered “health care for billionaires” to middle-income, Medicaid and Medicare populations.