Category: Direct Primary Care

Texas Hospitals Thrive While Saddling Patients with High Medical Bills and Debt

Posted on by Devon Herrick

Kaiser Health News and the Urban Institute looked at areas with high medical debt and compared them to hospitals’ profit margins. It profiled the North Texas region surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth.

Of the nation’s 20 most populous counties, none has a higher concentration of medical debt than Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth. Second is Dallas County, credit bureau data shows.

Does a lot of medical debt indicate that a Urban Institute are struggling to pay their medical bills and the local hospitals are struggling as a result? That was not the case according to the analysis.

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Doctors: Friends Don’t Let Friends Ride Bicycles Stoned

Posted on by Devon Herrick

From 2019 to 2020 more than 11,000 patients were treated in hospital emergency rooms for bicycle accidents while high on methamphetamine, marijuana or opioids. Some were also drunk or had been drinking alcohol.

The most common drugs found were methamphetamine (36%); marijuana (32%); and opioids (19%). Nearly a quarter of injured bikers had also been drinking alcohol, the study found.

Researchers speculate that some of the crash victims may have suffered fatal injuries.

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Is $2.8 Million a Fair Price for a Revolutionary Treatment?

Posted on by Devon Herrick

There’s a new drug in town called Zynteglo. It’s used to treat a life-shortening blood disorder called beta thalassemia. This disorder reduces the ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen. It’s one of many genetics-based treatments destined to come to market in the next few years. Many of these treatments will be for cancer and other diseases for which there is no current treatment and require life-long therapies.

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The Changing Demographics of Covid Deaths

Posted on by Devon Herrick

People are still dying from Covid although who is dying and how many has changed as we enter the third year of the pandemic. Covid has always been a killer of elderly people, but it’s also taken a heavy toll on younger people who were considered essential workers and could not shelter in place. This is data from California:

From April 2020 through December 2021, Covid killed an average of 3,600 people a month, making it the third-leading cause of death in the state cumulatively for that time period, behind heart disease and cancer. From December 2020 through February 2021, it briefly overtook heart disease as the leading cause of death, taking the lives of more than 38,300 Californians in just three months. During its most recent peak, in January 2022, Covid took about 5,900 lives.

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