Thursday, April 15, 2004

As Tech Spreads, Hippocrates Dawdles
Column in the Washington Post by Steven Pearlstein - "...In terms of information technology, the health care industry is now about where the auto industry was in 1980. This problem is at the heart of why the United States spends way more than any other industrialized country for health care with very little to show for it in terms of better health. If we could solve it, we could avoid tens of thousands of deaths each year from medical errors and save much of the estimated $150 billion wasted on unnecessary paperwork and medical procedures..."  
  

US children get uneven health care, report finds
Reuters story - "U.S. children are not getting the best health care and are often given inappropriate drugs and untested treatments, according to a report published on Thursday. The report from the Commonwealth Fund also found large disparities in care for children, based on geography as well as on ethnic group and income. ... The report estimated that 79 percent of children with serious mental health problems got no evaluation or treatment and that 7.5 million children failed to get needed mental health care." The full 134 page report is available at the Commonwealth Fund web site in Adobe Acrobat format.  
  

Study: Medicaid Privatization Hurt Schizophrenics
Health Scout News story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution - "Poor schizophrenics were left out in the cold when Tennessee health officials decided to subcontract their care to save money, say researchers who warn that similar policies in other states could put others at risk. "If you need to change the financial arrangements, there should be provisions to protect these kinds of vulnerable patients," said study co-author Wayne Ray, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Sixteen states subcontract -- or "carve out" -- Medicaid mental-health services, which provide medical services for the poor. Tennessee transferred its mental health services to two HMOs in 1996, paying them a fixed amount for each patient regardless of how serious his or her condition was...." The study's findings are reported in the May 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.