Medicare Aims to Cut Errors in Half by 2008
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Steps aimed at cutting Medicare fraud and payment errors in half over the next four years were announced by US health officials on Monday.
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Medicare's new prescription drug  coverage should help most elderly, including some of the  poorest beneficiaries, save money, but nearly a quarter will  pay more for medicine, according to an analysis released on  Monday.
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WASHINGTON  - Republicans' long-sought  curbs on medical malpractice awards are likely to top the  congressional health care agenda when lawmakers return in  January, even as Democrats prepare for a clash over potential  cuts to Medicaid, aides said Friday.
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Taxpayers could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year if soaring Medicaid reimbursements for prescription medicines more closely matched
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The Bush administration announced plans Tuesday to cut Medicare payments to cancer doctors, saying taxpayers have been paying the physicians up to twice what they should for certain medications.
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The U.S. government needs to step up its push for electronic health records because they are not being adopted quickly enough, a group of health advocates said Friday.U.S. healthcare providers continue to make errors that hurt tens of thousands of patients each year, and e-health records could prevent many of those problems, said Dr. Alan Lotvin, senior vice president of oncology for Magellan Health Services Inc. The U.S. healthcare system is failing patients &quot;despite the fact we have the knowledge and the technology to really do a much, much better job.&quot;About 3.5 percent of all U.S. hospital stays have a drug error associated with them, leading to more than 100,000 significant medical problems and nearly 30,000 deaths each year, said Lotvin, speaking at an e-health forum sponsored by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the Health IT Now Coalition.U.S. residents should have a &quot;sense of outrage&quot; when confronted with these prescription errors, which would largely be prevented with e-health records, Lotvin said. He compared the U.S. health-care system&#39;s record to Amazon.com, which received 2,000 orders per minute during the 2005 holiday shopping season.&quot;I use Amazon a lot -- I have never gotten the wrong book,&quot; he said. &quot;We can&#39;t seem to get the pills from the pharmacy in the basement to Mrs. Smith in room 631 correctly. This is not acceptable.&quot;Lotvin called on the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that would mandate that healthcare providers report their error rates. He also called for a law that would require healthcare providers that have made mistakes on a patient to pay for any subsequent care required. Many medical errors can result in long hospital stays or expensive procedures, and in many cases, patients or their insurance providers pay, he said.&quot;You break it, you fix it,&quot; he said. &quot;That&#39;s a very simple concept. It&#39;s been around in china shops for years.&quot;In addition, the ITIF, in a report released Friday, recommended several steps Congress could take to encourage the adoption of e-health records:*&#160;Congress should pass legislation that supports the adoption of national health data standards. The report mentioned two bills that provide funding and organization at a national level, the Wired for Health Care Quality Act in the Senate, and the Promoting Health Information Technology Act in the House of Representatives.*&#160;Congress should pass a bill to support the creation of health record data banks, data centers where individual patients could store and control their health data. The Independent Health Record Trust Act in the House would regulate data bank operators, prohibiting them from charging fees to health-care providers for accessing or updating an e-health record upon permission of the patient.*&#160;The U.S. government should lead by example by covering the monthly access fees at health record data banks for patients covered by government-funded programs such as Medicare and the State Children&#39;s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).*&#160;Congress should allow patients free access to e-health records held by healthcare providers. Currently, medical privacy laws allow patients to get paper copies of their medical records, but healthcare providers can charge fees for copying and mailing those records. Congress should phase out those fees, a measure that would encourage doctors to move to electronic records, ITIF said.Currently, only about 25 percent of U.S. doctors use e-health records, and only about 10 percent of them have e-health records fully integrated into their practices, ITIF said. But in Sweden, 90 percent of doctors use e-health records, and in Denmark, 88 percent do, according to the ITIF.That shows that adoption in the U.S. is a matter of the right policies and incentives, said Robert Atkinson, ITIF&#39;s president. &quot;This is not rocket science,&quot; he said.More people need to push Congress to create incentives for e-health records, added Nancy Johnson, a former U.S. representative and co-chairwoman of the Health IT Now Coalition.&quot;Why, when we know this would help so much, are we not doing it?&quot; Johnson said. &quot;We know how to deliver a higher quality of care, and we&#39;re not doing it.&quot;
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Wal-Mart Stores Inc on Tuesday announced adjustments to its health care plan which it said will save 1.3 million full and part-time U.S. workers about $25 million on generic prescription drugs next year.
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Federal officials are trying to cut down on aggressive or deceptive sales pitches for Medicare Advantage plans.
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It's a new way to push for patient safety: Don't pay hospitals when they commit certain errors. Medicare will start hitting hospitals where it hurts in October, and other insurers are hot on the trail.
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Companies that provide Medicare   prescription drug coverage will offer most seniors cheaper   options for 2007 during an enrollment period next month, U.S.   officials said on Friday.
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More than 98 percent of U.S. hospitals  are now reporting quality-of-care data for treating heart  attack, heart failure and pneumonia, the Centers for Medicare  and Medicaid said on Thursday.
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More than 47 million Americans receiving Social Security will get a 2.7 percent increase -- an extra $25, on average -- in their monthly checks next year, but much of the increase will be eaten up by higher Medicare premiums.
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Few Employers Say They Will Drop Coverage In 2006 When Medicare Drug Law Is Implemented - As businesses struggle to control rising retiree health costs, they are asking their retirees to pay more and plan to do so again in 2005, according to a new survey
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Despite the perception that technology is the panacea that will improve patient safety and reduce medication errors, nearly 20 percent of hospital and health system medication errors reported to USP&#39;s MEDMARXSM program in 2003 involved computerization or
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Cost-cutting efforts should help turn the company around in 2008.
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The Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston, run by Harvard physician Dr. Donald Berwick, will try to save 100,000 patients from fatal medical errors and poor care in the next 18 months by persuading hospitals to improve in six areas.
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Depending on whose interpretation of a new study one wants to believe, Medicare may â or may not â have saved money since the introduction of the stents in 2003.