Emory University's Center for Health Discovery and Well Being is part of an effort to answer one of the most pressing questions for healthcare: how to reverse the growing burden of chronic disease. Many experts believe the answer is to shift the focus from diagnosing and treating disease to maintaining good health and prevention, and one way to do that is to tailor healthcare to each individual based on his or her unique characteristics. But the challenge is finding a way to do so that benefits the largest number of people and that doesn't waste healthcare dollars. Now researchers from Ohio State University, Vanderbilt University, Duke University, and elsewhere are convening at Emory to explore possibilities for predictive health and personalized medicine.
The incidence of new cancer cases has been falling in recent years in the United States, the first time such an extended decline has been documented, researchers have reported. Death rates from cancer continued to decline as well, a trend that began some 15 years ago, the report also noted. The report attributes the reductions to adoption of healthier lifestyles and improved screening, as well as advances in treatment.
How well a person on Medicare understands the program's benefits affects their access to healthcare, according to a study. The report found that a third of the surveyed Medicare beneficiaries considered themselves as being unfamiliar or very unfamiliar with their program's benefits. "Well designed educational interventions or policies simplifying Medicare benefit programs could have a significant effect on beneficiaries' abilities to get needed care," principal author Robert O. Morgan, a professor of Management, Policy and Community Health at the University of Texas School of Public Health, said in a news release.
Under Blue Cross/Blue Shield's standard option next year, patients will pay 100% for an operation by an out-of-network physician, up to a maximum of $7,500, "per surgeon, per surgical day," according to the Service Benefit Plan. Currently, the rate is 25% of what the company sets for a procedure, plus any difference between that and the billed amount. The fee change has created some outrage among members and their doctors.
Even as layoffs at several companies raise concerns that New York City's economy is shrinking fast, the hospitals and universities that dominate the city's large nonprofit sector are generally holding firm and accounting for a growing share of private-sector jobs. Instead of laying off large numbers of employees, New York's hospitals and universities are trying to weather the economic storm without significant cuts.
The number of outpatient-surgery centers rose in Pennsylvania in 2007, according to a report from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. Total margins for the ambulatory-surgery centers rose from 20.85% in fiscal 2006 to 24.74% in fiscal 2007. Their margins have increased an average of 2.2 percentage points per year since fiscal 2001.
Duke University Health System is seeking approval from North Carolina regulators for a $235 million expansion to its cancer treatment and research facilities. The proposal includes building a 265,000 square-foot cancer center next to the existing Morris Cancer Clinic, which would be renovated. Duke officials said that the expansion is necessary to handle increasing demand for cancer care as the region's population grows and treatment improves. The project requires approval from the state's Certificate of Need office.
Louisiana State University and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are set to announce plans for a new medical campus in downtown New Orleans that is expected to generate thousands of jobs. The medical center will replace the hospitals that each institution lost to Hurricane Katrina. It will also anchor a biosciences corridor taking shape downtown and ensure the city's medical schools have a place to train doctors and nurses.
Following years of rising revenue and strong profits, the six health systems in the Milwaukee area are on track to spend more than $1.3 billion expanding or building new hospitals. They have spent millions more to buy physician practices, hire physicians, and open new clinics. But all that may be in the past, as the economic downturn has taken its toll on the systems' investment portfolios. It already has led to belt-tightening, forcing the systems to look for projects that could be postponed.
Tarrant County, TX, hospitals are scrutinizing their cardiac care in an attempt to expedite the life-saving balloon angiopasty procedure. The goal is to get patients to a cardiac lab for balloon angioplasty quickly, with a "door-to-balloon time" of 90 minutes or less. In Tarrant County, hospitals' performance varies widely, with some reaching the goal less than two-thirds of the time. Baylor Grapevine has the best results, hitting the target for 97% of the 59 patients they treated for that condition, according to 2007 CMS data.
