Healthcare Trends

Despite increasing criticism of the practice, most doctors continue to accept gifts such as free meals from pharmaceutical and device-maker firms, convinced that such gifts aren't changing their prescribing patterns. A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that four out of five doctors let the drug and device firms buy them food and drinks. This trend continues despite widely-known guidelines issued in 2002 by the Pharmaceutical Research and …

Something may be giving in the eternal fight between managed care and the pharma business over brand-name drug costs. Prescription drug prices rose at the slowest pace in a decade during 2006, climbing 8.2 percent, compared with 9 percent in 2005, according to prescription management firm Express Scripts. Experts don't expect the smaller increases to continue, however, as they anticipate that fewer costly high-volume brand name drugs will go generic in coming years.

Meanwhile, drug …

An investigation by the Senate Finance Committee has concluded that drug makers are using their financial clout to improperly influence Continuing Medical Education programs. The investigation also found that the pharmas were promoting drugs for off-label uses, an illegal practice which could land them in hot water with federal regulators. The Senate report said that about one-quarter of CME program providers have violated standards set by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical …

Hospitals are continuing their war against methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), battling a worrisome new trend in which patients actually enter the hospital with a "community strain" version of the bug rather than picking it up as an inpatient. The efforts supplement newly-aggressive programs fighting in-house MRSA infections. A growing number of hospitals are making big-bucks investments in new "search and destroy" programs hoping to nip MRSA in the bud. Hospitals …

Bowing to the pressures created by the consumer-driven healthcare trend, the Tennessee Hospital Association has created a website offering service prices for most of its 136 member hospitals. The site, which draws on data reported to the state from October 2003 to September 2004, list average prices for common procedures. HCA hospitals aren't included in the tally, but the site does link to HCA's own price disclosure sites. (HCA recently decided to disclose prices for common procedures at …

U.S. critical care needs to be reorganized or risk collapse due to doctor shortages, according to a report issued by a group including doctors, patients and insurers. The group is recommending that critical care be delivered in a tiered, regionalized system rather than ad hoc at individual hospitals.

Right now, critical care services face a crisis, with intensivist shortages predicted as the number of patients grows with the aging of the American population. A federal study …

Healthcare researchers already know that as boys become men, they visit the doctor less often, sometimes because of costs or lack of health insurance. Now, a new study suggests that problem is deeper than that. The study, by the Johns Hopkins Children's Center, suggests that 15- to 19-year-olds see visits to doctors as a sign of weakness. Researchers, who looked at data from 1,700 young men, also noted that the young men's parents may not be encouraging them to get annual exams either, …

Each year, 1.7 million Americans die and 25 million are disabled by chronic diseases created or aggravated by the patient's lifestyle, according to the CDC. But coaching patients on how to change their lifestyle and improve their health has not been one of doctors' strengths, to say the least. In fact, many provide only vague recommendations that do little impact a patient's behavior. But one group of doctors is working to reverse this trend. Two years ago, the group founded a new …

In the past, a patient's dental health didn't get a lot of attention from doctors, who assumed that only dentists needed to consider the effects of gum disease. But as it turns out, gum disease is far more dangerous than it appears. Research conducted over the past five years is suggesting that long-term gum disease can speed the progression of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, pregnancy complications and several other conditions. What's more, such infections can increase surgical …

When it comes to fancy amenities, some patients are apparently more equal than others. Increasingly, hospitals are developing high-end, five-star-hotel like amenities for the well-heeled, tempting these patients with fine linens, broadband Internet and flat-screen TVs in their rooms. Such patients are an attractive target because they pay top rates, either shelling out their own cash or being paid for directly by their employers as an extra perk. These batteries of tests and …