Unneeded Treatment And Overpriced Services Fuel Health Care Waste : Shots
Dong Chang
In 2015  Dr. Dong Chang  the director of the medical intensive care unit at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center  a public hospital in Los Angeles  decided to see whether the care being delivered in his ICU was appropriate.
 Chang  and  his  team also reviewed the use of intensive care at 94 hospitals in two states  Maryland and Washington  focusing on four common conditions that can lead to treatment in an intensive care unit.
 Chang  attributes the difference to doctors using intensive care based on their habits  hunches or training. Profit  he said  may also be a motive  but it didn't appear to be a driving force.
"We really don't have good standards and a good discussion going on about who should receive ICU care  " Chang  said.
The unnecessary intensive care can also be harmful. The study found intensive care patients underwent more invasive procedures  like the insertion of catheters  including central lines  which carry the risk of infection. Overuse of the ICU is bad for patients who don't need it   Chang  said. Survival rates were also no better at the hospitals that used intensive care the most.
Reducing unneeded intensive care stays would save big money. Intensive care costs about $10 000 for a typical stay and accounts for 4 percent of national health care expenditures  according to research cited by  Chang 's team.
 Chang  hesitated to call the overuse of intensive care "wasted" health care spending.  He  said the medical literature calls it "non-beneficial" care  which is maybe a nicer way of saying the same thing.
For O'Neill   her  dispute of the fee for  her  daughter's ear piercing was a trip into the hell of medical billing.
O'Neill is an attorney  so  she  knows how to weed through fine print. But it took  her  untold hours and phone calls to the hospital and  her  insurance company to root out the issue. The hospital had initially billed  her  insurer for the $1 877.86 for "operating room services" related to the ear piercing. The company rightly rejected payment for the cosmetic procedure. So  the hospital billed the family  according to  her  medical and billing records and correspondence.
O'Neill said  she  got nowhere in several conversations with the manager of the hospital's team that deals with payments directly from consumers. Then in mid-July  O'Neill wrote a letter to the manager explaining that they were at an impasse and urged the hospital to cancel the bill.
In 2015  Dr.  [TGT]   the director of the medical intensive care unit at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center  a public hospital in Los Angeles  decided to see whether the care being delivered in his ICU was appropriate.
 Chang  and  his  team also reviewed the use of intensive care at 94 hospitals in two states  Maryland and Washington  focusing on four common conditions that can lead to treatment in an intensive care unit.
 Chang  attributes the difference to doctors using intensive care based on their habits  hunches or training. Profit  he said  may also be a motive  but it didn't appear to be a driving force.
"We really don't have good standards and a good discussion going on about who should receive ICU care  " Chang  said.
The unnecessary intensive care can also be harmful. The study found intensive care patients underwent more invasive procedures  like the insertion of catheters  including central lines  which carry the risk of infection. Overuse of the ICU is bad for patients who don't need it   Chang  said. Survival rates were also no better at the hospitals that used intensive care the most.
Reducing unneeded intensive care stays would save big money. Intensive care costs about $10 000 for a typical stay and accounts for 4 percent of national health care expenditures  according to research cited by  Chang 's team.
 Chang  hesitated to call the overuse of intensive care "wasted" health care spending.  He  said the medical literature calls it "non-beneficial" care  which is maybe a nicer way of saying the same thing.
For O'Neill   her  dispute of the fee for  her  daughter's ear piercing was a trip into the hell of medical billing.
O'Neill is an attorney  so  she  knows how to weed through fine print. But it took  her  untold hours and phone calls to the hospital and  her  insurance company to root out the issue. The hospital had initially billed  her  insurer for the $1 877.86 for "operating room services" related to the ear piercing. The company rightly rejected payment for the cosmetic procedure. So  the hospital billed the family  according to  her  medical and billing records and correspondence.
O'Neill said  she  got nowhere in several conversations with the manager of the hospital's team that deals with payments directly from consumers. Then in mid-July  O'Neill wrote a letter to the manager explaining that they were at an impasse and urged the hospital to cancel the bill.