- Just 3% of all Covid vaccine doses went to Africa, which has one-fifth of the world’s population. (NYT)
- VA health record system: Errors delay medication and treatment, endangering more than 40,000 patients.
- Paul Krugman in 2006: The VA “has been able to take the lead in electronic record-keeping and other innovations that reduce costs.”
- Kaiser study: Value of the tax exemption for nonprofit hospitals: $28.1 billion. Value of charity care: $16.0 Billion.
- Dylan Matthews: against work requirements for Medicaid.
Category: Doctors & Hospitals
Nurses Join the Gig Economy
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.
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.