Accessibility of Healthcare Category Archives — Page 2 of 68 — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

April 20, 2021

Alarms sounding as opioid-overdose crisis worsens, especially with fentanyl

Even as the nation sees cause for optimism in its battle against the coronavirus, our struggles against substance abuse are falling far short of what’s needed. The opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis has worsened significantly during the pandemic and experts are warning that too many of us need to cut back from excess boozing.

The New York Times reported that recent federal figures on the opioid crisis have back worse that officials feared:

“More than 87,000 Americans died of drug overdoses over the 12-month period that ended in September, according to preliminary federal data, eclipsing the toll from any year since the opioid epidemic began in the 1990s. The surge represents an increasingly urgent public health crisis, one that has drawn less attention and fewer resources while the nation has battled the coronavirus pandemic. Deaths from overdoses started rising again in the months leading up to the coronavirus pandemic — after dropping slightly in 2018 for the first time in decades … The biggest jump in overdose deaths took place in April and May, when fear and stress were rampant, job losses were multiplying, and the strictest lockdown measures were in effect. Many treatment programs closed during that time, at least temporarily, and ‘drop-in centers’ that provide support, clean syringes and naloxone, the lifesaving medication that reverses overdoses, cut back services that in many cases have yet to be fully restored.

April 18, 2021

Pandemic numbers do add up — to a complex and persistent health menace

by Patrick A. Malone

An Ohio congressman got testy with one of the nation’s leading infectious disease experts, insisting that Dr. Anthony Fauci instantly cough up a metric to tell politicians and the public exactly when the coronavirus pandemic will end. Fauci declined to offer a simple 1-2-3 answer, trying to supply a nuanced and thoughtful response, instead.

The further anger his comments provoked may suggest it’s time to look yet again at the pandemic by the numbers. They do, indeed, tell a story but read it and them with care.

A tragic toll equivalent to noted U.S. metropolises

April 16, 2021

With malpractice claims constrained, injured Florida kids and families struggle

by Patrick A. Malone

When doctors, hospitals, and insurers bellyache about malpractice claims with little evidence on their prevalence or outcomes, patients and politicians should push back: And they can cite the nightmares people in grievous circumstance have suffered when their constitutional right to seek justice in civil lawsuits gets stripped away.

The Miami Herald and ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative website, have conducted a joint, deep dive into Florida’s decades-old legislative experiment, purportedly to assist families struggling with infants’ birth-related and catastrophic disabilities. The state’s neurological injury compensation initiative also was promoted as a way to stem a problem seen mostly in anecdote and not evidence — obstetricians and other specialists supposedly fleeing Florida, reputedly due to spiking malpractice insurance costs.

The media investigators, in a multipart series , have found that eliminating medical malpractice lawsuits for this slice of patients has benefited not the patients but instead, doctors, hospitals, and insurers.

April 14, 2021

Questions aplenty about medical device-makers paying doctors $3.6 billion

by Patrick A. Malone

Although Big Pharma has taken deserved heat for selling its drugs by slathering doctors with cheesy tchotchkes, lavish or even cheap meals, and pricey trips, as well as lucrative consulting and speaking opportunities, medical device-makers’ physician-payment programs also should get a tougher, deeper look.

That’s because device manufacturers paid doctors $3.62 billion in the years 2014–17 — 1.7% of the revenue in their business sector and more than seven times the percentage of drug industry revenue spent on payments to MDs, according to a new study published in the respected medical journal Health Affairs.

The payments have come under increasing fire, as even the smallest sums — yes, even for a slice of pizza and a beer or a few sodas — may sway doctors in prescribing drugs or favoring treatments, notably with certain medical devices. The sketchy product-promotion spending may not benefit patients and may boost health care costs, a growing body of evidence from studies is showing.

April 13, 2021

Racism? CDC calls it a threat. Prominent doctors need a kick to recognize it.

by Patrick A. Malone

While the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared racism a serious threat to the nation’s health, establishment medicine finds itself mired in an angry scandal over doctors’ inability to recognize the term, much less its existence, or its considerable harms.

An uproar at a leading medical journal might seem a tempest in an ivy-covered tower. But patients will want to track even a little the professional furor falling on the leaders of the respected Journal of the American Medical Association.

Its website recently featured a podcast, for which doctors could get continuing professional education credit, in which host Ed Livingston (photo above left), JAMA’s deputy editor for clinical content and “a white editor and physician, questioned whether racism even exists in medicine,” Usha McFarling, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist reported for Stat, the medical-science news site.

April 11, 2021

Battle stays bumpy against an uneven pandemic, fueling further uncertainty

by Patrick A. Malone

The campaign to conquer the coronavirus pandemic is having its cautious optimism tested by a stubborn and concerning surge of cases in the Midwest and Northeast, as well as frustrating vaccine supply problems — worsened by manufacturing bungles in a Baltimore plant.

Expert forecasters now see options for how the crucial next several months could go in the battle against the disease. These include an effective vaccination program outpacing the rise of variants (including the B117 strain that has become the most common in this country) and quashing the pandemic, to the viral mutations getting out of control and the nation limping into persistent and unchecked infections for a long time.

In Michigan, where one of the worst outbreak rages (see Mayo Clinic hot spot map, above), the governor and state officials have found themselves in a public policy quandary, uncertain whether stern health restrictions may have lost their public support to be effective now after showing results before. But in California, officials are waiting and watching to see if plunging infections, hospitalizations, and deaths will reverse as they have elsewhere.

April 7, 2021

Can U.S. billions keep seniors at home and out of problem nursing homes?

by Patrick A. Malone

As the coronavirus pandemic’s most catastrophic effects recede in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, notably due to vaccinations and other public health measures, residents and their loved ones still face costly, confounding issues in safeguarding the aged, sick, and injured. The Biden Administration wants to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to help.

But will the plans founder due to Republican resistance? And will even a huge jolt of funding be enough to deal with a graying nation’s growing problems with long-term care?

Our own homes provide a cornerstone of Democratic proposals to deal better with nightmares with the cost, safety, and availability of long-term care. Instead of sinking yet more public money — via Medicare and Medicaid — into institutions, can the federal government, instead, improve funding so seniors, the ill, and injured can stay home and get treatment there? As the Washington Post reported:

April 5, 2021

From Medicare seniors, lessons on delayed care and importance of insurance

by Patrick A. Malone

Patients packed in their doctors’ waiting rooms in pre-pandemic times may have looked around and wondered: Why are there so many seniors here receiving medical care?

It isn’t just age that gets older Americans in numbers to treatment for illness or injury or preventive care — it’s also, of course, their qualification at 65 for government-supported medical insurance, aka Medicare. That, perhaps, unsurprising conclusion has been affirmed by Stanford doctors and researchers in newly published research. The study also offers important insights on delayed treatment and the crucial role played by health insurance.

The work involved running down a hunch of Dr. Joseph Shrager, a cardiothoracic surgeon who wondered why so many older patients he saw were diagnosed with lung cancer at age 65 — and not, say, at 61, or 64? He discussed the observation with colleagues who concurred in their curiosity about Medicare eligibility and its role in disease diagnosis. As the university news service reported of the insurance hypothesis:

April 4, 2021

U.S. teeters between vaccines’ rising successes and pandemic’s fourth wave

by Patrick A. Malone

The coronavirus vaccine has shown powerful protective qualities when medical scientists scrutinized its large-scale results in real life.

It has demonstrated great potency in safeguarding kids ages 12-15, in early test results from the shots’ makers.

The inoculation appears to be lasting, ensuring patients for at least six months after did not suffer serious infection or hospitalization.

March 31, 2021

Biden extends special sign-up period for Obamacare with increased subsidies

by Patrick A. Malone

The Biden Administration has further expanded a special sign-up season for health insurance plans offered on Obamacare exchanges, giving consumers until Aug. 15 to enroll in coverage that also may be much cheaper.

The newly confirmed Health and Human Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement:

“Every American deserves access to quality, affordable health care — especially as we fight back against the Covid-19 pandemic. Through this special enrollment period, the Biden Administration is giving the American people the chance they need to find an affordable health care plan that works for them.”