Stephen C Schimpff's Blog Posts Tagged 'cost' (5)

Medicare is complicated. And expensive to government and individuals. My last post was the beginning of a primer on Medicare. It is not simple but can be understood. Medicare covers about 50 million older Americans for general health care and covers about 75% of covered services or 50% of total health care costs of these seniors. Medicare, as the largest single insurer, sets the standard for reimbursement rates across all insurers. It tends to pay slightly less than costs, leading hospitals…

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Imagine a person that develops an acute problem that requires hospitalization and even a time in the ICU. Serious but something that modern medical care can deal with and cure. Until …the patient now develops an unexpected serious infection and despite excellent and appropriate medical care, dies. Unfortunately this scenario is all too common in today’s hospitals.

 

More than 100,000 Americans die each year from hospital acquired infections; that is the infection developed only…

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I have written frequently about the importance of chronic illnesses. Most of us are just not aware that their incidence is rising - and rapidly. We tend to think instead about acute illnesses and injury but chronic illnesses are now not only common but last a lifetime once developed and are inherently expensive to treat. On top of that there are enormous losses in quality of life, personal productivity and economic impact on the individual and society.

The Milken Institute quantified some… Continue

The decade ahead is one likely to be full of turbulence. How everything will shake out is anybody’s guess.



But we can be sure that technology advancements will slow for no one. The rate of medical technology advancement now is very fast and the speed will only accelerate. One big problem is that technology advances so fast that there is no time for a purchase – say new CT scanner or diagnostic device in a clinical laboratory – to create any return on the investment before a new or… Continue

On May 12, 2010 the Harvard Business Review ran this post of mine on their web site. The original is at http://tinyurl.com/2vnpato



Prevention is the key to both better health and lower health-care costs over the long haul. This is where the nation — and each of us as individuals — needs to put energy and resources. In the long run, it is more important than addressing the high cost of new technologies and drugs or their inappropriate… Continue