The Verdict Is In—Price Gouging Harms People With Gout

The patient arrived in my clinic, their right big toe the color of a spring strawberry. The lightest touch caused exquisite pain. Fortunately, I was able to prescribe a pill (an ancient medicine, actually) and the patient was better by the next day.

Too bad that simple treatment is becoming unaffordable, through a maddening combination of greed and regulatory failure.

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The Crushing Cost Of Tracking Healthcare Quality—One Hospital’s Story

A whole industry is devoted to measuring, tracking and even incentivizing the quality of American hospital care. Unfortunately, that industry is horribly inefficient, costing us billions of dollars.

Quality measurement is inefficient in large part because there is no single source that hospitals (and provider systems, more generally) can use to track the quality of their care.

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Preventing Diabetes – What Medicare Administrators Could Learn From Shark Tank

The Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program is a lifesaver. Consisting of of at least 16 class sessions that provide practical training about healthy eating, physical activity, and other strategies for weight control, the Program reduces the chance that people at high risk for diabetes actually develop that life-threatening condition.

However, the Program is floundering, with distressingly few people having access to or enrolling in the program. Could it be because Medicare administrators haven’t watched enough episodes of Shark Tank?

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Spend Too Much On Your Medications? Help Is On The Way

How is a physician supposed to know which medicine is most affordable under which insurance plan?

Fortunately, there are tools coming into use designed to help clinicians figure out patient-specific costs of any medication they prescribe. The tools (jargon alert!) are called RTBTs, for real-time benefit tools.

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Regulating Surprise Bills Lower Healthcare Prices – Guess How Much

You wake up in the post-operative recovery area, still groggy, the full effects of the procedure obscured by an anesthetic haze. You begin to ponder several questions: Was the surgery a success? Did the surgeon find anything unexpected? How quickly will the procedure make you feel better?

There’s another question you might ask yourself. A few weeks from now, is anyone involved in your care going to send you a surprise bill?

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PeterUbel