Until 1980, the U.S. was similar to other countries in per capita spending and life expectancy. Princeton University sociology professor Paul Starr, PhD, said high inflation and sluggish economic growth in the late 1970s hurt countries’ abilities to afford healthcare. The difference was “other countries have been able to put limits on healthcare prices and spending” while the U.S. relied on market forces.

CMS has approved an extension of Maryland’s model of offering a fixed payment for most hospital services, allowing physician practices and nursing homes to voluntarily participate in a program that has saved Medicare hundreds of millions of dollars.

Recording physicians during patient visits could reducing physician burnout while improving care quality. But polices regulating how to collect, manage and store such information present barriers to utilization, according to an article published May 14 in The BMJ.

Younger patients are routinely sedated during radiologic studies, requiring some kind of restraint to avoid unclear imaging from anxious fiddling or unconscious movement, but when is sedation actually appropriate? How can clinicians avoid it?

The Healthcare Facilities Accreditation Program (HFAP) has released the 2018 edition of its annual quality report, illustrating how deficiencies were most commonly found at the hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) it inspects.

Kerrin Lee-Gartner, who won a gold medal in alpine skiing at the 1992 Olympics and currently works as a sports analyst, has announced she is pledging her brain to the Canadian Concussion Centre (CCC) for concussion research.

Iowa’s “supplemental payment plan” for nursing homes was rejected by CMS over concerns about having county hospitals assume the licenses of for-profit nursing homes.

A data report released by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Peterson Center on Healthcare showed the U.S. has higher prices for many healthcare services compared to other high-income countries, including on MRIs and joint replacements, and how some prices have risen faster than inflation.