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Even though consumers don鈥檛 expect to pay for faulty service or goods, they are often forced to pay for bad health care. But a small number of hospitals and doctors are seeking to change that practice.
The number of hospitals across the country has plummeted, but many old buildings are being resuscitated as apartments and condos.
Drugmakers, hospitals and lawmakers are taking sides in a showdown over a discount program that covers drug purchases at some hospitals.
If you鈥檙e in the hospital and aren鈥檛 happy with how they are treating you, here are some simple steps to improve your situation.
What being old and sick in America can mean 鈥 and ways to navigate the often treacherous journey through the system.
Many of the gunshot survivors who suffered serious injuries face not only high deductibles and out-of-network charges but also lost wages.
Advertising for hospitals, unlike pharmaceutical companies, doesn't have to be backed up by data or facts. Cheerful messages of hope can feel like a slap in the face to a dying patient.
They say it will help reduce unnecessary ER visits and ensure better follow-up care. It鈥檚 also good P.R., and helps them meet their obligations to provide benefits to the community in exchange for significant tax breaks.
The strategy has been used mostly in Indiana, where many county-owned hospitals purchased or leased nursing homes to take advantage of a wrinkle in Medicaid payment rules and augment federal reimbursements.
ICU nurse Julayne Smithson had only a few minutes to grab some things from her recently purchased home a block from the Santa Rosa hospital. Then she rushed back to help evacuate patients and has scarcely stopped working since.
Hospitals view adding trauma care as a potential profit tool, but experts say having more centers does not necessarily improve the system鈥檚 ability to respond to a mass casualty event.
Despite a lack of medical training, relatives increasingly are assigned complex, risky medical tasks at home, such as maintaining catheters. If done incorrectly, blood clots, infections, even death can result.
A federal drug program blocks rural hospitals from getting discounts on rare-disease drugs, forcing staff to cut back on supplies of lifesaving medicines.
Not only are health prices hidden, industry players are contractually obligated to keep them secret. That鈥檚 why answering a simple question 鈥 how much does it cost to have a baby in Mountain View, Calif.? 鈥 became a journalistic quest.
To strengthen your core knowledge of health care policy, it helps to be a regular reader of Kaiser Health News. Here's a pop quiz to gauge what you have learned.
Gobbling up doctors鈥 independent practices is lucrative for hospital systems 鈥 but not necessarily a good deal for the physicians or consumers, critics say. Northern California is a case in point.
Most acquisitions by hospitals of physician practices are too small to trigger antitrust attention, study says. But a buying spree of 鈥渙nesies and twosies鈥 doctor practices has driven competition down and prices up.
Hospital use of two popular heart medicines, nitroprusside and isoproterenol, dramatically dropped after the prices for both soared.
Federal records show that 2,573 hospitals around the country will have their Medicare payments reduced because they have too many patients readmitted.
Tennessee and Virginia regulators are considering approval of a merger between Mountain States Health Alliance and Wellmont Health System under their state laws. If they allow it, the Federal Trade Commission would be powerless to stop it.
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