A panel from the Institute of Medicine has proposed a tax on every healthcare transaction to double the amount of money the federal government spends each year on public health. The group says that more public health outreach around obesity could reduce adult obesity by 50 percent, the same relative reduction in smoking rates that resulted from the public health community’s campaigns against smoking in the past few decades.
Moody’s senior credit officer says that for-profit hospitals will be in deep financial trouble if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. Dean Diaz named HCA Inc., Community Health Systems and Tenet Healthcare Corp. as the companies that would be most affected. He said repeal would limit revenue growth and profit margin. Read Moody’s statement here (pdf).
Hospitals can cut about $8.5 million per year from their labor budget by improving inefficient processes and better managing the skill mix dollar variance. These suggestions are two of the 15 recommendations based on data from more than 290 hospitals that participated in Premier healthcare alliance’s QUEST collaborative. The study also targets unnecessary lab tests, diagnostic imaging and respiratory therapies.
The Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization are relying on Roche’s claims about Tamiflu’s effectiveness instead of an independent review of the original trial data. The drug company has never released data from 10 clinical trials, 8 of which had not been published a decade after completion, despite promises to do so. A postdoctoral fellow in comparative effectiveness research and an independent epidemiologist with the Cochrane Collaboration argue for openly available drug data in a New York Times editorial.
VasoNova can now sell its Arrow VPS vascular positioning system in Europe. The system uses ultrasound technology, intravascular ECG and advanced algorithms to determine correct placement of central venous and PICC lines. The system has been available in the United States for more than a year.
