I teach an undergraduate health policy class at Duke, populated in part by ambitious premeds. (Sorry for that last bit of redundancy.) One of the things I like to emphasize in the class is the kind of medical practice milieu students can expect to encounter when they finally become physicians. That’s a good way to…
In the New York Times on Thursday, October 17, Topher Spiro wrote an important op-ed expressing why we need to hold onto the medical device tax that helps pay for parts of the Affordable Care Act. Spiro backs up his argument by pointing out how profitable the device industry is. To his argument I would also add the fact…
Physicians need to broach discussions about out-of-pocket costs with patients the same way they discuss a treatment’s side effects, public policy professors wrote. “Admittedly, out-of-pocket costs are difficult to predict, but so are many medical outcomes that are nevertheless included in clinical discussions,” Peter Ubel, MD, of Duke University’s School of Public Policy, and colleagues wrote….
When Dr. Jeffrey Rice needed to schedule outpatient foot surgery for his son three years ago, he called the recommended facility to find out what it would cost. The estimate was so high — $15,000 to $25,000 — that Rice asked the surgeon for a second option. The cost for the same one-hour procedure at…
Regular followers of my blog probably realize by now that I am a big fan of Sarah Kliff , at the Washington Post, who does a great job of reporting on the many ups and downs of Obamacare. Here is a video Sarah just put together, explaining the health insurance exchanges which go “live” today,…
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina will offer individual health plans through new on-line exchanges ranging from $185 for the lowest-cost plan for 25-year-olds to $947 for the top plan for a 60-year old. Those rates were among those the insurer included Thursday in a preview of the plans it will look to…
The Surgery Center of Oklahoma’s decision to publicly post prices for common procedures could prompt other hospitals and medical facilities to follow suit. Want to know how much it will cost to repair your torn Achilles tendon? At the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, you won’t run into a wall of bureaucracy trying to find out: The…
Physicians have been, at best, slow to adopt electronic medical records. But who can blame them? These computerized systems often cost lots of money, and force physicians to spend gobs of valuable time learning a new way to track how they care for patients. On the other hand, we would all be better off if…
I’m back to blogging again, and thought I’d return to a topic I have blogged about recently: expanding the role of non-physicians in primary care. A very talented journalist in North Carolina, Jason deBruyn, wrote a nice piece which I am indenting below, laying out some of the controversies. Debate settles in on costs versus…
I was recently struck by two news headlines that hit my email inbox on the same day: “Most Doctors Don’t Meet U.S. Push for Electronic Records” and “Sebelius touts new emphasis on healthcare data“. Do you see the problem here? If we really want to leverage “big data” to improve health care, we need physicians…