insured

> A doctor-owned med mal insurer based in California is offering insured physicians a total of $21 million in discounts. Premiums should drop about 7.5 percent. Article

> An emerging trade group for retail clinics has released its own set of quality and safety standards. …

Even if they're insured, many heart patients don't get adequate follow-up care, according to research published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The research, which followed 2,498 patients recovering from heart attacks, found that one in five patients felt they couldn't afford follow-up care, and one in eight didn't buy medicine due to the cost. The kicker: more than two-thirds of the patients who reported being worried about expenses actually had …

HCA has decided to roll with the transparency trend. Over the next few months the hospital chain will begin making prices for its services publicly available, starting with hospitals in Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. HCA expects to start disclosing prices in Tennessee over the next few months, and should roll out the program to all of its 165 U.S. hospitals by this summer. Prospective patients will be able to check out prices for common procedures by following a link on the …

Drawing a conclusion likely to be challenged at all levels of the healthcare industry, a new study by advocacy group Families USA has concluded that uninsured children do much worse in the health system than insured kids. The study, which was conducted by a researcher at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, concluded that children without health insurance are twice as likely to die from injuries as insured children. It also found that uninsured children are less likely to get …

Virgina's Supreme Court is considering whether doctors are immune from medical malpractice suits that stem from charity care they provided at Virginia's three teaching hospitals. The Court is being asked to rule on two cases--one in which a child was permanently injured and another in which a child died as a result of malpractice. Lawyers for the victims maintain that doctors shouldn't be exempt from malpractice suits. "The public should be offended that well-paid physicians treating …

New research from The Lewin Group, a non-partisan research organization, has concluded that the health insurance tax restructuring proposed by President Bush could indeed save money for some families, and cut the number of uninsured in the U.S.  Lewin researchers also noted that the plan could accomplish one of its main goals, cutting increased health spending; in fact, it could cut such spending by about $24.5 billion in 2009, said vice group president John Sheils. …

Employers like expense-shaving consumer-driven health plans, according to a survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute Research and the Commonwealth Fund. But consumers? Not so much. The survey reached 3,158 privately insured adults aged 21 to 64, and used that data to project U.S. trends. The two groups found that only 1 percent of privately-insured Americans--about 1.3 million individuals--are enrolled in CDHPs, which often have a $1,000 initial deductible for individuals and a …

If you're not ready to pay a $100 surcharge, don't bring minor issues to the emergency department at Jacksonville, FL-based Memorial Hospital or Orange Park Medical Center. In August, the two HCA facilities began charging less-sick patients extra as a means of minimizing overcrowding. Since October, about 500 of the 5,500 patients treated at Memorial's ED were encouraged to seek primary care after being triaged. If they still wish to be treated in the ED, they can be, as long as they're …

This is the story of one more healthcare system's struggle to provide humane, cost-efficient care to an underserved population, in this case illegal immigrants. Like other uninsured patients, Delaware's illegal immigrants often have little access to primary care. When they're sick, they end up in the emergency rooms of Delaware's hospitals, crowding out insured patients while generating bills they can't pay. The hospitals get some federal funding to compensate for the cost of caring for …

Sometimes, even well-insured patients can't afford the co-pays imposed by their health plan--and of course, some people don't have insurance to begin with. But doctors don't usually ask patients whether they can afford needed drugs, and patients rarely admit to the problem on their own, according to a new study published in the The American Journal of Managed Care. As a result, rather than working with their physician to find generic drug alternatives or make use of physician …