Medical Benefits articles from July 2003

Medical Benefits archives from July 2003

Drug trend report. (Health Care Costs).
July 30, 2003... "Drug trend [the percent increase in spending on prescription drugs] is expected to show robust growth over the next three years and could range between 13% and 18% per year based on existing plan coverage designs. While prescriptions drugs...

Rapid magnetic resonance imaging vs radiographs for patients with low back pain. (Health Care Costs).
July 30, 2003... "Faster magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning has made MRI a potential cost-effective replacement for radiographs for patients with low back pain. However, whether rapid MRI scanning results in better patient outcomes than radiographic...

OECD health data 2003: a comparative analysis of 30 countries. (Health Care Costs).(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
July 30, 2003... "OECD countries spent record amounts on health care in 2001--an average 8.4% of their gross domestic product (CDP), up by three-tenths of a percentage point from 2000. Healthcare expenditure in OECD countries has grown more than 1 percent...

The quality of health care delivered to adults in the United States. (Health Care Policy).
July 30, 2003... "Our [study] results indicate that, on average, Americans receive about half of recommended medical care processes. [Key findings:] * Only 24% of participants in our study who had diabetes received three or more glycosylated...

The additional diagnostic value of ultrasonography in the diagnosis of breast cancer. (Health Care Policy).(Brief Article)
July 30, 2003... "With a lifetime risk of 10%, breast cancer is a major public health problem for women in Western countries. Its diagnosis and treatment are creating a financial burden to the health care system. The use of ultrasonography (US) in...

Medical malpractice caps: the impact of noneconomic damage caps on physician premiums, claims payout levels, and availability of coverage. (Health Care Policy).
July 30, 2003... "Soaring premiums on medical malpractice insurance (med mal) are a national crisis, invading the practice of medicine, threatening the availability of care, and prompting widespread public outcry. Physicians and the insurance industry place...

Managed care and the rationalization of mental health services. (Health Care Policy).
July 30, 2003... "An important obstacle to evaluating managed mental health care is the difficulty in assessing treatment effectiveness. In order to determine if treatment is cost effective, managed care must emphasize measurable outcomes (i.e.,...

2002 drug testing index. (Workplace Health & Benefits).
July 30, 2003... "The incidence of positive drug test results attributed to amphetamine use increased substantially among general U.S. workforce employees over the last five years during a time when amphetamines became more widely accessible. Among general...

House, senate vote to overhaul medicare. (Legal Pulse).(Brief Article)
July 30, 2003... Bills to radically overhaul the Medicare system passed both Houses of Congress within minutes of each other--easily in the Senate, and by the tightest of margins in the House. Both bills would provide prescription drug coverage for Medicare...

Aetna, doctors settle lawsuit. (Legal Pulse).(Brief Article)
July 30, 2003... Aetna and representatives of more than 700,000 physicians and state and other medical societies have settled a national class action pending in the federal court for the Southern District of Florida, as well as multiple state court actions...

New FDA rule will speed access to generic drugs. (Legal Pulse).(Brief Article)
July 30, 2003... The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a new rule that will streamline the process for making generic drugs available to consumers. The new regulations limit the "innovator" drug company to only one 30-month delay in approval...

HCA, justice department reach record settlement in fraud case. (Legal Pulse).(Brief Article)
July 30, 2003... HCA Inc. (formerly known as Columbia/HCA and HCA--The Healthcare Company) has agreed to pay the United States $631 million in civil penalties and damages arising from false claims the government alleged it submitted to Medicare and other...

CI insurance has a place on the worksite benefit menu. (Workplace Health & Benefits).(critical insurance )(Brief Article)
July 30, 2003... "More people are surviving critical illnesses like cancer, strokes and heart disease now than ever before. As a result, the bigger battle is often meeting the mounting debts experienced during and after the illness. When someone is hit...

Pharmaceuticals and worker productivity loss: a critical review of the literature. (Workplace Health & Benefits).(Brief Article)
July 30, 2003... "Indirect costs, or productivity costs, predominate for many chronic or recurrent conditions, such as migraine, which intermittently affect work performance but are rarely totally disabling. Pharmaceuticals, whether used for prevention or...

Violence in the workplace on the rise. (Workplace Health & Benefits).(Brief Article)
July 30, 2003... "An increase in on-the-job tension stemming from rising layoffs and crashing retirement accounts is fueling an increase in workplace violence, experts warn. While this trend is bad news for employers, the good news is that through training...

2001 National Hospital Discharge Survey. (Health Care Industry).
July 30, 2003... "The 32.7 million patients in the nation's hospitals in 2001 had a much shorter stay on average (4.9 days) than patients hospitalized in 1970 (7.8 days). Over the past three decades, the average length of a hospital stay dropped for all...

Help wanted, desperately. (Health Care Industry).
July 30, 2003... "The healthcare industry reported 168,000 vacant hospital positions in 2001, including 126,000 positions for RNs, according to the American Hospital Association. Current trends in demand and nursing school enrollments suggest the 6%...

Utilization of services by chronically ill people in managed care and indemnity plans: implications for quality. (Health Care Industry).
July 30, 2003... "Are managed care patients more likely to be hospitalized for complications of their chronic conditions than are indemnity patients? [Since] incentives for managed care organizations favor cost containment, concerns have been raised that...

2003 pharmacy compensation survey--spring edition. (Health Care Industry).
July 30, 2003... "The pharmacy profession continues to pay well relative to other professions, but pay within the pharmacy field varies significantly depending on geographic location. Nationally, the position of staff pharmacist receives median total cash...

MB stat.(Illustration)
July 30, 2003... MB STAT Prevalence of Diagnosed Diabetes Among Adults Aged 18 Years and Over: United States, 1997-200 1997 5.1% 1998 5.3% 1999 5.4% 2000 5.9% 2001 6.4% 2002 6.5% Source: Early Release of Selected Estimates...

Disease management: the programs and the promise. (Reference Desk).(Brief Article)
July 30, 2003... This report is intended to provide information for health plans and employers considering providing disease management (DM) services to their members or employees. It includes an industry overview, describing key features of DM programs....

So much to do, so little time: physician capacity constraints, 1997-2001. (Reference Desk).(Brief Article)
July 30, 2003... Signs of tightened physician capacity--or physicians' ability to provide services relative to demand--appeared between 1997 and 2001, according to a study by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). This report presents findings...

Overcoming obstacles facing the uninsured. (Reference Desk).(Brief Article)
July 30, 2003... This 23-page written statement by Tom Miller of the Cato Institute, subtitled "How the Use of MSAs, FSAs, and Tax Credits Can Help Meet the Problem of the Uninsured," was provided on May 8, 2003, to the House Small Business Subcommittee on...

Health care cost and access problems intensify. (Reference Desk).(Brief Article)
July 30, 2003... Continued high-cost trends are threatening the affordability of health insurance and many consumers' access to care. Early findings from the Center for Studying Health System Change's (HSC) 2002-03 site visits to 12 nationally representative...

2003 benefits survey. (Workplace Health & Benefits).(Brief Article)
July 15, 2003... Society for Human Resource Management, June 2003 "Virtually all respondents (99%) indicated their organization offers some form of health care insurance. Eighty-seven percent indicated that their organization offers preferred-provider...

Trends in employer medical plans and worker behavior for 2003. (Workplace Health & Benefits).
July 15, 2003... Fidelity Investments, March 27, 2003 "While both employers and employees are sharing the increased costs in 2003, most employees remained enrolled in the same medical plan they chose for last year. Additionally, [our] analysis showed...

Computer use and carpal tunnel syndrome: a one-year follow-up study. (Workplace Health & Benefits).(Brief Article)
July 15, 2003... Johan Hviid Andersen, MD, PhD, et al., Journal of the American Medical Association, June 11, 2003 "Computer use is increasingly common among many working populations, and concern exists about possible adverse effects of computer use. ...

Consumerism in health care: the quest to create new partnerships for responsibility and accountability. (Workplace Health & Benefits).
July 15, 2003... Segal Executive Letter, June 2003 "In contrast to managed care, which focuses on a third party controlling the price and the number of services that doctors and hospitals can provide plan participants (i.e., the supply side of health...

The CalPERS purchasing experience: the 2002-2003 health care environment. (Health Care Costs).(California Public Employees' Retirement System)
July 15, 2003... The California Public Employees' Retirement System, June 18, 2003 Editor's Note: The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the nation's third-largest purchaser of employee health benefits after the federal government...

Post-approval R&D raises total drug development costs to $897 million. (Health Care Costs).
July 15, 2003... Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, Impact Report, May/June 2003 "Drug development continues to be a time-consuming, risky and expensive process. To mitigate [the] rapid rise in research and development (R&D) costs,...

Can a disease self-management program reduce health care costs? (Health Care Costs).(Brief Article)
July 15, 2003... John R. C. Wheeler, PhD, Medical Care, June 2003 "There is increasing interest in the potential for chronic disease management interventions to provide health benefits while reducing health care costs. [However,] despite the potential...

The new medical malpractice crisis. (Health Care Policy).
July 15, 2003... Michelle M. Mello, J.D., Ph.D., et al., New England Journal of Medicine, June 5, 2003 "The American Medical Association has identified 18 states in which physicians and institutional healthcare providers are having grave difficulties...

DOL proposes changes to COBRA notification. (Legal Pulse).(Department of Labor)(Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act)(Brief Article)
July 15, 2003... The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has issued proposed regulations that set the minimum standards for the timing and content of eligibility notices sent under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA). The proposed...

Treating physician rule does not apply to disability claims under ERISA. (Legal Pulse).(Brief Article)
July 15, 2003... The U.S. Supreme Court has said while a plan administrator is expected to consider the opinion of a treating physician when determining whether a person is qualified for disability benefits, the treating physician's word is not necessarily...

HHS likely to review Maine Rx plan. (Legal Pulse).
July 15, 2003... Although the U.S. Supreme Court has lifted a court order blocking the state of Maine from enacting a plan to lower prescription drug costs in the state, the ruling was not a definite win for the benefit plan. The purpose of the "Maine Rx"...

National survey of the public's views on medicare. (Health Care Policy).
July 15, 2003... The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School or Public Health, June 19, 2003 "Eighty percent of seniors have a favorable impression of Medicare and 62% say the program is well-run. Younger adults [ages] 18 to 64 are less...

A review of the evidence for the effectiveness, safety and cost of acupuncture, massage therapy and spinal manipulation for back pain. (Health Care Policy).
July 15, 2003... Daniel C, Cherkin, PhD, et al., Annals of Internal Medicine, June 2003 "More than 50% of Americans experience back pain each year; most have pain for more than one week. In the United States, $25 billion is spent annually on medical...

The perils of healthcare workforce forecasting: a case study of the Philadelphia metropolitan area. (Health Care Industry).
July 15, 2003... David Barton Smith, Ph.D., et al., Journal of Healthcare Management, March/April 2003 "In 1996, the Pennsylvania Economy League (PEL) and a private task force composed of key leaders from Philadelphia's business community and healthcare...

Refocusing Web site marketing: physician-patient relationships. (Health Care Industry).
July 15, 2003... Peter M. Sanchez, DBA, Health Marketing Quarterly, Vol. 20(1) "Physician Web sites have become commonplace in the world of health care marketing. Most, if not all of these Web sites, focus on practice enhancement tactics as a means of...

The next wave. (Health Care Industry).(Brief Article)
July 15, 2003... Paula Dewitt, HealthLeaders, June 2003 "Employers as well as health plans are beginning to expand the definition of disease management (DM) to include not just traditional programs like diabetes, asthma and heart disease, but also a new...

Taming hospital billing. (Health Care Industry).
July 15, 2003... Lucette Lagnado, The Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2003 "Accustomed to basking in their image as charitable care givers, hospitals have found themselves under a spotlight recently following revelations that many of them demand that the...

MB stat.(Illustration)
July 15, 2003... The Nurses Aren't In: Number of Licensed Registered Nurses Not Employed in Nursing, 1998-2000 1998 405,997 1992 386,791 1996 443,059 2000 494,727 Sources: Modern Healthcare, June 16, 2003; Bureau of Health...