school of public health news from FierceHealthcare
News
Harvard, RAND-backed provider payment model to be tested
An evidence-based healthcare payment model driven by researchers at RAND Corporation and the Harvard School of Public Health will be rolled out in January at four pilot test sites with funding from a... Read more...
Study: Hispanics get lower-quality medical care
It's more discouraging news from the health disparity front: A new study suggests that elderly Hispanics tend to get inferior care. The study, which looked at Medicare data from 2004, found that... Read more...
Patients urged to guard against care errors
According to research by the Harvard School of Public Health, about 34 percent of patients say they or their families have been affected by a medical error. For people with chronic illnesses, the percentage rises to a frightening 50 percent. This may be, in part, because doctors aren't spending a lot of time listening to patients, interrupting after about 23 seconds, studies suggest. Realistically, it also comes from the inevitable ongoing process errors that occur during the routine …
... Read more...ALSO NOTED: NY running low on MDs; Doctor accused of perjury, fraud; and much more...
> A study conducted by the Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University at Albany's School of Public Health has found that the supply of physicians in Western New York is continuing to dwindle. Report
> Researchers at Harvard Medical School say insurers could save a lot of money if they pay for certain medications taken by people who had suffered a heart attack. …
... Read more...Distribution of U.S. health professionals uneven
The distribution of healthcare workers continues to be quite uneven across the U.S., according to a new report from The Center for Health Workforce Studies (CHWS) at the University at Albany's School of Public Health. The report, which used data from 2004, found that New Hampshire had the highest number of nurses per capita in the U.S., at 1,283 per 100,000 residents, while California, in contrast, has only 588 nurses per 100,000. Researchers also noted that only 5 percent of the nation's …
... Read more...HMO pay for performance plans common
More than half of commercial HMOs in the U.S. have now implemented some form of pay for performance program, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. The study, which surveyed 242 commercial HMOs, concluded that 52.1 percent of the plans were using some type of pay for performance scheme. These plans collectively manage for 81.3 percent of all U.S. commercial HMO enrollees, …
... Read more...Healthcare in the wake of 9/11
A study conducted by researchers at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and published in the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism examines healthcare trends in the wake of September 11, 2001. The study found that the use of healthcare declined in the three weeks following the attack. Surprisingly though, mental health claims were lower than expected in the six months after 9/11, perhaps because free services were available to victims. But researchers did note a …
... Read more...Diabetes mgmt improves care, not outcomes
Reminding diabetic patients to come in for foot and retinal exams gets them into the office all right, but standard diabetes disease-management strategies don't seem to do much for controlling key factors like blood sugar, blood pressure or cholesterol, or for getting patients to take their medications properly, according to a new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers from the UCLA School of Public Health studied 8,661 patients from 63 physician groups in several …
... Read more...Quality improvement campaign a success
There's some encouraging news from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, where Don Berwick's campaign to save 100,000 lives appears to be a success. Berwick, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, launched the campaign in December of 2004, pledging to reduce the number of avoidable deaths at hospitals by pushing specific quality improvements. Since then more than 3,000 hospitals--representing 75 percent of U.S. hospital beds--have agreed to participate. There were a …
... Read more...ALSO NOTED: HealthSouth reports Q1 loss; Johns Hopkins launches Center for Global Health; and much more...
> IBM is donating public health software that could be used to track pandemic flu. Article
> Shares of HealthSouth fell to $4.53 as the Birmingham based chain of rehabilitation hospitals reported first quarter numbers for the first time since 2002. The company posted a loss of $453.1 million for the quarter. …
... Read more...