National news |
CMS adds to Medicare do-not-pay listThe Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is adding to the list of services it will not pay for Medicare patients. Last year, the agency announced it would not pay hospitals the extra cost of treating certain preventable conditions, which it calls “never events” (originally called “Serious Reportable Events” by the National Quality Forum). The conditions added this year are:
See the CMS web site for a full report. |
The wait for emergency care grows longerIn the mid 1990s, waiting to be seen in an emergency room averaged 38 minutes. By 2006, the wait was nearly an hour. That’s according to a report of health care usage published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Stephen Pitts, the lead author of the report and associate professor of medicine at Emory University in Atlanta, attributed the longer wait to supply and demand. There was a 32 percent increase in emergency room visits, from 90 million to 119 million, between 1996 and 2006. At the same time, the number of hospital emergency departments dropped from nearly 4,900 emergency departments in 1996 to fewer than 4,600 in 2006. A CDC provides a summary report on its web site. |
2008: Most U.S. measles cases reported since 1996More measles cases have been reported in the United States since Jan. 1, 2008, than during the same period in any year since 1996, according to a report released today in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. And many of those who fell victim to the disease had not been vaccinated because of their parents beliefs. Between January 1 and July 31, 2008, 131 cases were reported to CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. At least 15 patients, including four children younger than 15 months old, were hospitalized. In the decade before the measles vaccination program began, three to four million people in the United States were infected each year. Of these, as many as 500 died, 48,000 were hospitalized and another 1,000 developed chronic disability from measles encephalitis. Of the 131 patients infected with measles in 2008, 112 were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status. Among the 112 unvaccinated U.S. residents with measles, 16 were younger than 12 months of age and were too young for vaccination; one was born before 1957 and was presumed to be immune. Of the 95 patients eligible for vaccination, 63 were unvaccinated because of their or their parents’ philosophical or religious beliefs. |
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