have argued that

In the latest salvo in the pay-for-performance wars, Medicare officials released a report on Monday which the agency claims offers conclusive evidence that quality programs improve hospital performance dramatically. CMS will pay $8.5 million in bonuses to hospitals this year. The first data released in a three-year test program at 270 hospitals showed an across-the-board improvement in quality. Critics have argued that pay-for-performance puts undo pressure on …

Pain management specialists around the country are closely following a developing power struggle in Washington between the two agencies. The Washington Post reports that the Food and Drug Administration is campaigning to win back influence it has lost in recent years to the Drug Enforcement Agency. Deputy Commissioner Scott Gottleib said the FDA is working to block legislation which would give additional powers to oversee painkillers to the DEA. The question of who should bear …

The argument over Medicare Part D appeared to gain strength on Wednesday in Washington, as House Republicans continued the push to defer the program for a year, arguing that doing so would save at least $32 billion. The group says that the government simply cannot afford to implement the program at a time when an estimated $200 billion--and possibly more--is needed to cover the costs of damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. 

Many analysts have argued that it is unlikely that the …

Led by John Wennberg at Dartmouth, a group of academics have long shown that practice variation in the US between different regions is extreme. In addition, a study from RAND a couple of years back showed that physicians only followed evidence-based medicine in their treatment decisions roughly half the time. Critics have argued that the US should have a central clinical body laying down national guidelines that physicians should be encouraged or even forced to follow.

That is the …

Researchers in Asia published a paper which criticizes western governments for not sharing access to drugs which can guard against the avian flu and said that the drug Zanamavir should be stockpiled in case of a possible pandemic. Writing in the Lancet, the group argues that experts have been overly conservative in ruling out the antiviral Zanamavir, which is marketed by GlaxoSmithKline as Relenza. Until now, most experts have argued that Oseltamivir, sold by Roche as Tamiflu, is …

The Food and Drug Administration warned about a possible link between antidepressants and suicide on Friday, its second statement on the issue. The agency said adults who take the drugs should be closely monitored -- especially when they first begin their prescriptions or when a dose is changed. The agency had earlier warned that children given antidepressants are vulnerable to increased suicidal tendencies. There is some controversy over the need for such warnings. Many critics have …

The nation's increasingly powerful VoIP industry learned this week that it must provide 911 capability for subscribers to its Internet phone services. The FCC order comes after Congress heard horror stories about customers unable to reach 911 numbers using Internet phone services. In one case a young child died of respiratory failure after her mother was unable to get through to an emergency services operator. VoIP companies have argued that it is not feasible for them to track users in …

The US leads the rest of the world in the use of high tech imaging, according to a new study. That's not very much of a surprise, especially for health policy critics who have argued that overuse of the technology is one factor driving high healthcare costs. According to the study, which compared the use of radiography (classified as low tech) with CT and MR imaging (classified as high tech), other countries are using a mix of both high tech and low tech solutions to some effect. Release