When a nonprofit healthcare provider in Austin, Texas, ran a check on its patients’ emergency room (ER) visits between 2003 and 2008, they discovered a group of 9 patients who had amassed almost 2,700 ER visits in just the six…

About $1.1 billion of the economic stimulus package just approved by Congress is devoted to comparing the merits and risks of the differing treatment options a patient and physician face when determining the best course of medical care for any…

As many as 72 million prescriptions each year are written for drugs that never received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), costing US taxpayers, by way of the Medicaid program, more than $200 million since 2004, according…

A spoonful of sugar may help the medicine go down but campaign promises made by politicians are best taken with a grain of salt. That includes some of the latest political rhetoric regarding the future of the nation’s healthcare industry.

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The 15,000 nursing homes in the United States are occupied by at least 1.5 million elderly and invalid Americans, about two-thirds of whom are covered in Medicaid or Medicare programs.  In addition to covering the cost of care to many,…

Thursday brought two announcements from Medicare officials, one bringing good news, the other not-so-good news. The US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (Medicare) has announced the names of 10 medical facilities or doctors demonstrating the highest mark of improvement…

Have your ever been frustrated by your doctor’s handwriting? Illegibly written prescriptions may soon be a thing of the past and medication errors will be drastically reduced if Medicare’s new incentives for ePrescribing are embraced by physicians. The incentives include…

As American senators angrily bickered across party lines last week, the bill that met with overwhelming approval in the US House of Representatives that would eliminate a 10% pay cut for doctors treating Medicare patients has been shelved so senate…

Every doctor in the United States who works with Medicare patients is facing a 10% pay cut starting on July 1.  On Tuesday, however, an overwhelming number of the members of the US House of Representatives voted on a bill…

The findings of an expansive study on healthcare costs conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers were released today, revealing the annual increase in the cost of health care is almost twice as high as the rise in the nation’s overall rate of inflation.

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Thomas Lutz was once a high-level executive at Health Visions Corp., a healthcare company based in the Philippines and doing business with the Pentagon.  Now he is facing five years in prison for swindling $100 million from the US military’s…

If you spent 14% of your income, or $14 of every $100 you earn, trying to get your hands on that very same income, wouldn’t you want to find a way to reduce the cost of gaining possession of your…

Earlier today, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, expressed concerns about the staggering amount of money the US government is spending on health care and how current projections for growth in healthcare spending threaten the nation’s economic stability.

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Getting medical or dental care without coverage by an insurance provider can be pretty tricky these days.  Long waits in overcrowded, uncomfortable waiting rooms are expected.  Sometimes the wait can last days.  Those are days spent off the job, not…