Reduce costs | Increase value | Enable innovation
Featured stories:
Trumpcare: Is it the Right Treatment for what Ails the American Health Care System?
All health care systems must strike a delicate balance between cost, quality and access. While Obamacare focused largely on increasing access to coverage and spreading the cost of illness across the entire population, Trumpcare tips the balance largely in favor of reducing federal spending, at the risk of destabilizing insurance markets and increasing costs for older and sicker individuals. (View video)
Effect of professional society recommendations on women's desire for a routine pelvic examination
One group of doctors, represented by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, recommends yearly pelvic exams for all women 21 years of age and older, whether they have symptoms of disease or not.
But the American College of Physicians, representing doctors of internal medicine, says that potential harms of the exam outweigh benefits and recommends against performing pelvic examinations unless a woman is pregnant or has symptoms of disease such as bleeding, pain or signs of infection.
Pharmaceutical Industry-Sponsored Meals and Physician Prescribing Patterns for Medicare Patients
About half of U.S. doctors received payments from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries in 2015, amounting to $2.4 billion, a new study reports.
Those payments and gifts very likely encourage doctors to prescribe pricey brand-name drugs and devices pushed by sales representatives, a second study argues. Doctors at academic medical centers were more likely to prescribe cheaper generic drugs than expensive brand-name drugs after their hospitals adopted rules that restricted pharmaceutical sales visits, the researchers said.
What you really need to know about your physician
The new cover story in Consumer Reports out Tuesday is called, “What you don’t know about your doctor could hurt you.” The magazine reports how "thousands of doctors across the U.S. are on medical probation for reasons including drug abuse, sexual misconduct and making careless -- sometimes deadly -- mistakes. But they are still out there practicing."
