Medicine & Health articles from February 2003

Medicine & Health archives from February 2003

Smallpox vaccinations start ... (Smallpox).
February 3, 2003... The Bush administration's smallpox vaccination plan is under way, but critics and supporters alike say serious concerns remain. Phase I, which is slated to involve up to 500,000 public-health and health-care workers, began in Connecticut on...

... But what of other public health programs? (Smallpox).
February 3, 2003... On another front, many public-health professionals worry that the vaccination campaign is sucking resources from state and local public health systems, just as they are using new federal funding to repair decay caused by decades of neglect. ...

Governors spur new drive for Medicaid flexibility. (Medicaid).
February 3, 2003... Though it wasn't mentioned in the State of the Union address, Medicaid appears to be moving onto federal agendas--including that of the Bush administration--with a vengeance. At press time, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson...

Bush wants new biodefense funding stream. (Bioterror).
February 3, 2003... In his Jan. 28 State of the Union address, President Bush proposed Project Bioshield, "a major research and production effort to guard our people against bioterrorism." The initiative has three prongs, the first of which is defined in a...

Carrots, sticks, electronics drive care-management efforts. (Chronic Disease).
February 3, 2003... Most physicians use only a small number of recognized care-management processes for treating chronic disease, according to a study in the Jan. 22/29 Journal of the American Medical Association. But adoption of stronger care management is more...

Scully: low-pay areas in "statutory death spiral". (Medicare Reimbursement).
February 3, 2003... While continuing to state that, in general, Medicare hospital margins indicate the industry is healthier than hospitals claim, the administration agrees with senators that some hospitals, particularly in rural areas, need reimbursement-formula...

CBO: budget deficit to near $200 billion. (Federal Budget).
February 3, 2003... On Jan. 29, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal government's unified budget deficit would rise from $158 billion in fiscal year 2002 to $199 billion in FY 2003. In nominal dollars, this would be the largest deficit since...

Feb. 12 drop-dead date on doc pay. (In Other News).(Brief Article)
February 3, 2003... Congress must resolve its differences and enact legislation by Feb. 12 to rescind the 4.4 percent Medicare physician-reimbursement cut slated to begin March 1 or see the cut go into effect, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services head Tom...

In cloning wars, second verse same as the first? (In Other News).
February 3, 2003... Jan. 29 marked the latest chapter in the continuing cloning wars, as Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) reintroduced legislation that would ban both reproductive human cloning and "research" or "therapeutic" cloning. The latter form of cloning involves...

Senators seek up-to-date malpractice data in pay formulas. (In Other News).
February 3, 2003... Conference language attached to the omnibus appropriations bill making its way through Congress will direct the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to stop using outdated data when calculating the component of Medicare physician payment...

South Korean new head of WHO. (In Other News).
February 3, 2003... A career official of the World Health Organization, Jong Wook Lea, MD, of South Korea, was elected by WHO's executive board Jan. 28 to head the group. If Lea's election is confirmed at the annual May meeting of WHO's health assembly, he will...

Medicare improper payment rate constant. (In Other News).
February 3, 2003... The rate of improper Medicare fee-for-service payments in fiscal year 2002 was 6.3 percent, unchanged from 2001, the Department of Health and Human Services said Jan. 24. In 2000, 6.8 percent of FFS claims were improperly paid. Erroneous...

Coming soon to the Kennedy Center ... (In Other News).
February 3, 2003... The Bush administration's proposed Medicare prescription drug discount card initiative has been expiring for a while now, as Washington D.C. District Court judge Paul Friedman has, over the months, been opining repeatedly that the Department of...

Massachusetts Department of Public Health. (People).
February 3, 2003... Christine Ferguson, who left the top spot in the Rhode Island Department of Human Services for a failed run at the U.S. House in 2002, will be the new director of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Prior to joining the Rhode Island...

Harvard School of Public Health. (People).
February 3, 2003... Ferguson will replace Howard Koh, MD, who's led the Massachusetts department since 1997. Koh, who spearheaded numerous preventive-health initiatives, including in smoking prevention, both before and after his tenure as public health chief,...

Department of Health and Human Services. (People).
February 3, 2003... Kerry Weems, a 20-year career employee at the Department of Health and Human Services, becomes the department's acting assistant secretary for budget, technology, and finance and its chief financial officer. He was acting deputy assistant...

Department of Homeland Security. (People).
February 3, 2003... Weems replaces Janet Hale, who is joining the Department of Homeland Security.

Office of Health Policy and Finance. (People).
February 3, 2003... National Academy for State Health Policy Executive Director Trish Riley will take a one-year leave from her post to head the Office of Health Policy and Finance newly established by Maine Gov. John Baldacci (D). She'll advise the governor on a...

Michael O'Grady is leaving the Project HOPE Center for Health Affairs to return to Capitol Hill, where he previously was an analyst on Medicare and other issues for the Senate Committee on Finance and a top health analyst for the bipartisan Medicare commission. (People).(Brief Article)
February 3, 2003... Michael O'Grady is leaving the Project HOPE Center for Health Affairs to return to Capitol Hill, where he previously was an analyst on Medicare and other issues for the Senate Committee on Finance and a top health analyst for the bipartisan...

The scientific director for intramural research at the National Institutes of Health's National Eye Institute is Sheldon Miller, of the University of California-Berkeley. (People).(Brief Article)
February 3, 2003... The scientific director for intramural research at the National Institutes of Health's National Eye Institute is Sheldon Miller, of the University of California-Berkeley. A continuous NIH grantee since 1978, Miller has been a professor of...

Bush health agenda: less than meets the eye.
February 3, 2003... President George Bush began what is expected to be a several-month process of laying out his health agenda for the year in his State of the Union message Jan. 28. With the speech--and the administration--focusing heavily on new tax cuts and a...

Bush proposes medicaid reform ... (Medicaid).
February 10, 2003... Like Pharaoh of old, states that opt into the Bush administration's revamped Medicaid program would get seven years of relative plenty. But critics warn that states could then face troubles that would stretch well beyond the seven years of...

As critics worry about incentives. (Medicaid).
February 10, 2003... Currently, Medicaid is an entitlement for states, meaning that they automatically receive unlimited federal matches for their expenditures. The administration proposal would replace this with a formula based on what each state spent on Medicaid...

Many state budgets still in Peril, sin taxes proposed. (State Budgets).
February 10, 2003... In their latest fiscal reports to the National Conference of State Legislatures, states report a cumulative budget gap of $25.7 billion midway through fiscal year 2003, which began on July 1 for most states. Thirty-six states report budget...

Can Kaiser drive the market to adopt electronic records? (E-Health).
February 10, 2003... Kaiser Permanente, the country's biggest health maintenance organization, announced Feb. 4 that it is beginning a 3-year project to move its 8.4 million medical records into an automated online system. The announcement "will perhaps shame"...

Smallpox vaccinations off to slow start. (Smallpox).
February 10, 2003... The first phase of the Bush administration's smallpox-vaccination campaign was originally slated to take a month and include roughly half-a-million health care workers. But two weeks into phase one, only 687 workers have been inoculated,...

Once more, with feeling--but without liability. (Patients' Rights).
February 10, 2003... Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA) told reporters Feb. 5 that he's finally thrown in the towel when it comes to enacting a law that would allow patients to sue health plans for faulty medical decisions. Instead, he's introducing two separate bills...

Industry research dollars bring benefits ... (Clinical Research).(Brief Article)
February 10, 2003... Industry may not only be increasingly financing biomedical research, but influencing it, too. "Strong and consistent evidence shows that industry-sponsored research tends to draw pro-industry conclusions," Justin Bekelman and his co-authors say...

... But sometimes only reports of benefits. (Clinical Research).
February 10, 2003... Bekelman et al discovered that "industry-sponsored studies were significantly more likely to reach conclusions... favorable to the sponsors than were nonindustry studies." One possible reason: The Yalies found four studies that "empirically...

Where MCOs rule, physicians mope. (Managed Care).(managed care organizations)
February 10, 2003... Overall, U.S. physicians' satisfaction with their careers declined marginally between 1997 and 2001, with most of the decline taking place from 1997 to 1999 and primary-care doctors becoming more disgruntled over the period than specialists,...

OIG to CMS: pay by service, not location, and save a bundle. (In Other News).(Office of Inspector General; Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services)(Brief Article)
February 10, 2003... * OIG To CMS: Pay By Service, Not Location, And Save A Bundle. Medicare could save $1 billion annually by no longer paying hospital outpatient departments higher rates than it pays ambulatory service centers, the HHS Office of Inspector General...

Father of modern False Claims Act wants to help midwife its children. (In Other News).(Brief Article)
February 10, 2003... * Father Of Modern False Claims Act Wants To Help Midwife Its Children. Concerned that the Justice Department is hostile to whistleblowers and unresponsive to congressional concerns regarding False Claims Act litigation, Sen. Charles Grassley...

AAHP to prod candidates about cost of proposals. (In Other News).(American Association of Health Plans )(Brief Article)
February 10, 2003... * AAHP To Prod Candidates About Cost Of Proposals. A new poll conducted for the American Association of Health Plans shows that costs are perhaps the public's biggest health-care concern, And AAHP plans to be on the ground in...

Health and Human Services. (People).(Brief Article)
February 10, 2003... Bernard Schwetz will be acting director of the Health and Human Services Office for Human Research Protections. The veterinarian and toxicologist served as director of the Food and Drug Administration's National Center for Toxicological...

Bush budget: no facts on drug plan, priorities same as in 2002. (Perspectives).
February 10, 2003... This is the first part of a two-part Perspectives on President Bush's fiscal year 2004 budget proposal. The second will appear Feb. 17. The administration's fiscal year 2004 budget proposal embodies most of the same spending priorities as...

Physicians score big in omnibus bill ... (Physician Reimbursement).
February 17, 2003... Physicians will get a 1.6 percent pay increase from Medicare, rather than a 4.4 percent decrease, under an omnibus spending bill passed by Congress last week. The omnibus, totaling almost $400 billion, wraps together the 11 appropriations...

... But may still face 2004 cut. (Physician Reimbursement).(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... Pending a final determination from Justice Department lawyers that Congress' action frees CMS to act--which Scully said he has "every expectation" of getting--CMS will make the corrections, yielding a 1.6 percent positive reimbursement update...

Government puts up most of $35 billion spent on uninsured. (Uninsured).
February 17, 2003... Uncompensated care for the uninsured accounted for about $35 billion in U.S. health spending in 2001, with federal, state, and local governments contributing about 85 percent of that total, according to analysis conducted for the Kaiser...

More discussion, but no more agreement, on AHPs. (Association Health Plans).(association health plans)
February 17, 2003... The fight over association health plans is heating up on Capitol Hill again. On Feb 11, Rep. Ernie Fletcher (R-KY) and others introduced legislation that would free AHPs from most state restrictions and allow them to operate under federal...

WTO still working on drug import issue. (Compulsory Drug Licensing).(World Trade Organization)
February 17, 2003... Trade negotiators again failed last week to agree on how much freedom poor countries should have to override drugmakers' intellectual property rights by importing generic versions of patented drugs. On Nov. 14, 2001, at the fourth...

Staffing, not policing, key on elder abuse, says AHCA. (Long Term Care).(American Health Care Association)
February 17, 2003... Legislation to decrease abuse of the elderly would be better if it focused on the need to add staff in long-term-care facilities and train workers in anger management and similar skills, according to the American Health Care Association. ...

Slater, Jindal leave HHS. (HHS).(Health and Human Services)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... Two top Health and Human Services officials have resigned. Assistant Secretary for Health Eve Slater, MD, left the department Feb. 5. She joined HHS late in 2001 after nearly two decades with Merck Research Laboratories and is leaving to...

Feds give nod to docs' plan to educate patients about provider pay. (In Other News).
February 17, 2003... Dayton, OH, physicians can join together to inform patients about what the doctors believe is inadequate reimbursement they receive in the local market without calling down on their heads the wrath of federal antitrust enforcers, the Federal...

And then there were three. (In Other News).(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... The Department of Health and Human Services Feb. 13 issued a final security rule for protecting electronic individually identifiable health information. Under the new standards, HHS said, "health insurers, certain health care providers, and...

SCHIP enrollment rises. (In Other News).(State Children's Health Insurance Program)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... During fiscal year 2002, 5.3 million children were enrolled in the State Children's Health Insurance Program at some point, according to a Feb. 5 statement issued by the Department of Health and Human Services. This represents a 15 percent...

For Aetna, selling and providing coverage are two different things. (In Other News).(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... Still in search of financial well being, big health insurer Aetna plans to phase out its subsidies of retiree health coverage, the company's hometown paper, the Hartford Courant, reports. After posting losses in all four quarters of 2001, the...

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (People).(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... Carolyn Clancy, MD, moves from acting director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to director. Before being named active director last March, she led the outcomes-research and primary-care branches of the agency. An internist,...

American Psychological Association. (People).(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... As of Jan. 1, Norman Anderson has been chief executive officer of the American Psychological Association. Previously a professor at the Harvard University School of Public Health, Anderson spent the period from 1995 to 2000 at the National...

Food and Drug Administration. (People).(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... Among those moving up at the Food and Drug Administration is Steven Niedelman, who is the agency's first assistant commissioner for regulatory affairs. A career FDA employee, he's been a member of the compliance staff of the Center for Devices...

Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. (People).(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... Also at FDA, Mary Purucker, MD, is director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research's counter-terrorism division. She's been a member of FDA's pulmonary and allergy drug division since 1995 and clinical team leader of that group since...

Budget: vaccine program gets booster shot; NIH star fades. (Perspectives).
February 17, 2003... This is the second part of a two-part Perspectives on the administration's fiscal year 2004 budget proposal. The first part appeared Feb. 10. With money tight and likely to get tighter, it' s no surprise that the president' s budget...

Court oks HMO malpractice suit. (ERISA).(health maintenance organizations)(Employee Retirement Income Security Act)
February 24, 2003... Federal law does not preempt a state malpractice action when an HMO denies coverage based on a patient's medical evaluation, even if the decision is also based on a legal evaluation of the insurance contract, a prominent federal appellate court...

HHS launches home health quality initiative ... (Quality).
February 24, 2003... As promised, the Bush administration has taken its health care quality improvement efforts into the home-health arena. Starting April 1, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will begin publishing results on 11 risk-adjusted outcomes...

... Focusing on outcome measures. (Quality).
February 24, 2003... Four of the OASIS measures to be publicized involve improvements in mobility, such as getting better at walking and getting in and out of bed without help. Four involve improvements in meeting basic daily needs, such as bathing and dressing....

Health-care connection in five of Frist's top 10 bills. (GOP Senate Agenda).(Brief Article)
February 24, 2003... Though little detail was available, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) on Feb. 13 released Senate GOP leaders' top ten legislative priorities for 2003. Half the items are health-related. Bills--or in this case, topics of potential...

Schedule slips for outlier rule. (Medicare Outlier Payments).
February 24, 2003... A new rule limiting outlier payments to hospitals will come out soon, but as a proposed rule rather than an immediately effective interim final rule, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Tom Scully told reporters Feb. 20....

More contract detail, more discussion could cut appeals. (Managed-Care Appeals).
February 24, 2003... A few specific service areas make up the lion's share of appeals lodged against health maintenance organizations' coverage decisions, and many appeals deal with services on the margin between care that treats and care that is life-enhancing but...

GAO: PBMs save money in FEHBP. (PBMs).(General Accounting Office; Pharmacy benefit managers; Federal Employees Health Benefits Program)
February 24, 2003... Pharmacy benefit managers produce significant savings for health plans and enrollees in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, the General Accounting Office recently reported. PBMs negotiated prices averaging 18 percent below what...

White House could expand Mexico-City policy. (In Other News).(Brief Article)
February 24, 2003... The Bush administration is considering expanding the so-called Mexico City policy to include not just funding for international family-planning efforts but HIV/AIDS-prevention programs, domestic-violence programs, and more, according to a Feb....

Don't blame us for high costs, say hospitals. (In Other News).(Brief Article)
February 24, 2003... Hospitals aren't so much the cause of rising health costs as the victims, caught in a spending cycle that's driven by rising prices of everything from labor to malpractice insurance, as well as increasing physician and patient demand for...

Minnesota legislative panel okays killing state database. (In Other News).(Brief Article)
February 24, 2003... A bill that would end Minnesota's attempt to establish a statewide database of health information was approved Feb. 19 by a state legislative committee, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports. In December, an administrative law judge ruled that...

Union questions how much displaced-worker credit will help steel retirees. (In Other News).(Brief Article)
February 24, 2003... The system of tax credits Congress enacted last year, designed to help people put out of work by trade agreements buy health coverage, could leave many steel-industry retirees in the lurch because of high cost and red tape, the United...

Psst? Wanna make money? Be a Medicaid HMO. (In Other News).(Brief Article)
February 24, 2003... That's the upshot of a Feb. 19 New York Times story that notes the growing interest by large national managed-care insurers in the formerly despised Medicaid health maintenance organization market. Several large insurers have greatly expanded...

Former Maine state senator Chellie Pingree (D), who lost her bid to oust Sen. Susan Collins (R) from her Washington seat last November, is the new chief executive officer of Common Cause. (People).(Brief Article)
February 24, 2003... Former Maine state senator Chellie Pingree (D), who lost her bid to oust Sen. Susan Collins (R) from her Washington seat last November, is the new chief executive officer of Common Cause. Pingree was the engine behind Maine's attempts to lower...

Trim some here, pad some there: FY 2003 funding final at last. (Perspectives).
February 24, 2003... Some congressional decisions about funding that differ from administration recommendations, and lots and lots of pork, are notable features of the fiscal year 2003 omnibus appropriations bill that Congress approved earlier this month. President...