Pressing Issues in Health Care
Q: How does your program, which provides more attentive care to at-risk patients, actually save money?
A: Better care results in less need for expensive hospital services. There was a 20% decline in hospital admissions and a 13% drop in emergency department admissions during the program’s first three years. Essentially, for every dollar spent, the program saved at least $2.65.
Time to Regroup
Can doctors and hospitals collaborate to improve quality and limit costs? The accountable care organization may be their last, best chance.
Museum Pieces
Drug availability is getting worse, with essential medicines often impossible to obtain. What will it take to fix the system?
Policing Physicians Online
Doctors use Facebook and Twitter just like the rest of the public, but their participation brings ethical and legal risks.
Why Drugs Run Out
According to data compiled by the University of Utah Drug Information Service, these are the most common reasons for drug shortages.
Drug Distributors: On The Gray Market
Though pharmaceutical products are tightly regulated, distributors aren’t, and that has led to a netherworld of dealers ready to exploit—or create—drug shortages.
Cheating the System
From mishandled stolen shipments to repackaged fakes to scammers diluting medications, there are multiple ways phony pharmaceuticals get in the supply chain.
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
The FDA and pharmaceutical companies have employed a number of methods to thwart counterfeiters—yet scammers seem to have no trouble keeping up.
A Matter of Time
Doctors' hours have risen, then fallen, since the practice of residency was adopted in 1889.
Lost in the Shuffle
Looking ahead to shorter resident hours causing more frequent patient handoffs, hospitals are working to ensure vital information is communicated to the next shift.
biocreep ['bī-(,)ō 'krēp] n: a possible phenomenon in which so-called noninferiority trials, which compare the efficacy of new drugs with that of existing drugs, in fact allow inferior treatments to go to market.
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Tune in to Proto: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Medicine on ReachMD. Host Dr. Bruce Bloom interviews Mass General experts about evidence-based medicine, hormone therapy and more.
“When I opened my spring issue of Proto, I was startled to see an X-ray of a baby with open safety pins in his esophagus. As I turned the page of the article I got a second shock. There was a photo of some of the 30 objects taken from an infant named Joseph B. I knew this was my father, Joseph Burke.”
