Hospitals are becoming part of the Gig Economy as administrators turn to staffing apps to fill shifts when internal staffing is low. The transition to more temporary nurses is fueled by a shortage that has given nurses more control over their schedule. Nurses are turning to the apps to manage when they work or pick up extra shifts as the gig work invades hospitals like it has other areas of the economy.
Category: Cost of Healthcare
Friday Links
- Health Savings Accounts after 30 years: 27.5 million individuals own one, with holdings of $105.7 billion.
- Three Medicaid reforms Biden doesn’t like: Trump era work requirements, the Tennessee block grant and the Texas waiver.
- What white bagging, brown bagging and clear bagging have to do with specialty drugs.
- A Crenshaw/Schrier House bill would give Medicaid enrollees access to direct primary care doctors.
- Insurers are using “copay accumulators” to prevent copay assistance (say, from a nonprofit to help patients with drugs costs) for counting toward the fulfillment of a deductible.
- The Biden administration is misusing the “march in rights” created under the Bayh-Dole Act to threaten to impose price controls on drugs that originally had government research funding. (WSJ)
Beyond House Calls, the Next Big Thing is Hospital Care in the Home
Hospitals are the most expensive place to get medical care in the health care industry. Hospitals consume nearly one-third of health care expenditures, accounting for more than $1.33 trillion a year. I often advise people to never get anything done at a hospital if they are physically able to go anywhere else. For example, my wife unknowingly started to make an appointment for an outpatient CT scan at a nearby hospital.
FDA: Eye Surgeons Need to Inform Patients about Lasik Risks
Ophthalmologists tend to view corrective eye surgery as routine, something which everyone with poor eyesight can benefit from. Although there are many types of corrective eye surgery Lasik is probably the best known and most widely used. My wife went for an eye surgery consultation only to discover the surgeon’s waiting room was about as busy as Grand Central Station. The ophthalmologist viewed the surgery as so routine that he didn’t really spend much time consulting with her. She ended up talking to him briefly and his staff for much of the overview. The experience did not sit well with her, and she decided against the surgery.