Warm Southern Breeze

"… there is no such thing as nothing."

Posts Tagged ‘healthcare’

How is FaceBook’s IPO like Erectile Dysfunction?

Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, May 20, 2012

{UPDATE: Tuesday, 22 May 2012 – 2d story added}

Read on, to find out why.

(Oh, and please, dear reader, don’t make me spell it out why.)

And, as an interesting note aside, Mr. Zuckerberg was married yesterday.

Here’s wishing him and his bride all the best.

Nasdaq ‘embarrassed’ over Facebook IPO

By Telis Demos in New York, May 20, 2012 10:12 pm

facebookNasdaq OMX‘s chief executive admitted he was “embarrassed” by the delay in the opening trade of Facebook’s initial public offering and revealed that the exchange was in talks with regulators over potentially millions of dollars of customer claims.

Bob Greifeld said on Sunday that the 20-minute delay in trading of Facebook’s $16bn offering on Friday had been caused by a millisecond systems blip due to the largest IPO auction “in the history of mankind”.

The exchange has found itself in the spotlight after Facebook failed to deliver a first-day “pop” to investors, instead almost falling below its issuing price of $38. The shares, having risen briefly, quickly fell away to close the day with a gain of just 0.6 per cent, at $38.23.

As a result of the trading delay, Nasdaq was left with a position in Facebook shares that it was forced to liquidate, according to its own rules, generating $10m for the group. It plans to use that money, plus potentially more, to resolve disputes related to 30m shares that may have received improper trades.

It has requested approval from Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in - Read 'em and weep: The Daily News, - Lost In Space: TOTALLY Discombobulated | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Nursing Salary Survey reports Western Nurses earn more

Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, May 15, 2012

One category of expert nurses this survey omitted – perhaps purposely – was Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists.

As a group, they have consistently earned six-figure salaries, typically upwards of $125,000/year.

Among Advanced Practice Nurses, CRNAs have continually earned significantly more than the average APN.

In fact, according to a salary survey report performed in 2005 by LocumTenens.com, CRNA respondents reported income ranging from $90,000-$250,000, with 63% reported earning between $110,000-$170,000/year.

The average salaries reported were: 2008-$163,467 / 2009-$169,043 / 2010-$166,833.

And, in 2011, the average reported salary for CRNAs in that survey was $168,998.

Research published by the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists in AANA Journal, April 2008, indicated that the median range for CRNA faculty – academic and clinical – earned between $120,000 and $140,000.

So, as you read the following items, please bear that in mind.

In the Occupational Outlook Handbook published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall average salary for Registered Nurses in 2010 was $64,690 per year, or $31.10 per hour. The job outlook (forecast) for 2010-2020 is that need is expected to grow 26% (Faster than average). According to the BLS, there were 2,737,400 Registered Nurses in 2010.

Among Nurses, NPs and Those in the West Earn the Most

Jennifer Garcia

Authors and Disclosures
Journalist
Jennifer Garcia
Jennifer Garcia is a freelance writer for Medscape.
Disclosure: Jennifer Garcia has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

May 11, 2012 — Nurse practitioners are the top earners among nurses, according to the Physicians Practice 2012 Staff Salary Survey . The survey reports salary averages from 1268 respondents, including nurse practitioners, registered nurses, and nurse managers. Salary information from other staff members such as physician assistants, medical records clerks, medical assistants, front desk staff, billing managers, and medical billers was also included in the survey.

Physicians Practice collected data during the fourth quarter of 2011, and Read the rest of this entry »

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Q: Why do hospitals charge $75 for aspirin? A: Because they can.

Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, May 2, 2012

It was once a long-standing joke that hospitals charged outrageous prices on medicines.

It’s not a joke anymore.

Once, a healthcare joke went like this:
Q: What’s the difference between a HMO, a PPO and the PLO?

A: You can negotiate with the PLO.

It’s not a joke anymore.

It should also be noted that a study conducted 26 years go by Jack D. McCue, Charles Hansen, and Peter Gal entitled “Hospital Charges for Antibiotics” found that:

“Hospital charges for intravenous antibiotics were obtained in a survey of 71 hospitals in 25 U.S. cities. Only 56.3% of the hospitals used their actual drug acquisition cost to calculate patient charges; the remainder used a base price derived from one of the wholesale price guides, which often seriously overstate the cost of antibiotics. Sixty-eight percent added a markup, averaging 134.5%, and 63.4% added a dispensing fee, averaging $5.47. A relatively high-dose, single-antibiotic regimen costs patients $50-$150 per day, independent of dose-preparation charges (average, $9.09 per dose) for a piggyback-type system or intravenous line-related charges. Antibiotics were least expensive in large hospitals and in those located in the northeastern United States. Charges for antibiotics are often inconsistently calculated, vary enormously among hospitals, and may be unfair to patients and confusing to physicians. Cost-conscious prescribing of antibiotics by physicians would be facilitated by a more consistent relationship between charges and true costs.”

That 1985 study may be found here.

The reader should also understand that in a hospital, ALL medications are administered by prescription only… even aspirin.

Cost Spotlight: A 443% Markup on Prescription Drugs

Kaiser Health News/USA Today shines a spotlight on increasing hospital costs specifically the price markup of over-the-counter and prescription drugs hospitals administer to patients.  The story examines Read the rest of this entry »

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What happens when physician pay is tied to efficiency & quality?

Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, April 16, 2012

What would it be like if you were paid for your success?

What would it be like if you were rewarded for high efficiency?

Is it possible that successful patient outcomes could be correlated to compensation?

How would one measure non-compliant patients, or those with poor prognoses?

Medicare moves to tie doctors’ pay to quality and cost of care

By Jordan Rau, jrau@kff.org Published: April 14

CMS plans to base the 2015 bonuses or penalties on what happens to a doctor's patients during 2013.

Twenty-thousand physicians in four Midwest states received a glimpse into their financial future last month. Landing in their e-mail inboxes were links to reports from Medicare showing the amount their patients cost on average as well as the quality of the care they provided. The reports also showed how Medicare spending on each doctor’s patients compared with their peers in Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska.

The “resource use” reports, which Medicare plans to eventually provide to doctors nationwide, are one of the most visible phases of the government’s effort to figure out how to enact a complex, delicate and little-noticed provision of the 2010 health-care law: paying more to doctors who provide quality care at lower cost to Medicare, and reducing payments to physicians who run up Medicare’s costs without better results.

Making providers routinely pay attention to cost and quality is widely viewed as crucial if the country is going to rein in its health-care spending, which amounts to more than $2.5 trillion a year. It’s also key to keeping Medicare solvent. Efforts have begun to change the way Medicare pays hospitals, doctors and other providers who agree to work together in new alliances known as “accountable care organizations.” This fall, the federal health program for 47 million seniors and disabled people also is adjusting hospital payments based on quality of care, and it plans to take cost into account as early as next year.

But applying these same precepts to doctors is Read the rest of this entry »

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Report: 20% of all American suicides are new Veterans

Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, April 15, 2012

UPDATE 19 April 2012:


The news you don’t hear…

Just because you don’t hear it doesn’t mean it goes away.

Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Bryan B. Battaglia, who is the Defense Department’s top enlisted leader, held a press conference in Washington, D.C. December 9, 2011 in response a report to Congress on suicide among America’s military veterans conducted by Center for a New American Security. Testimony was given December 2, 2011 before the House Committee on Veteran’s Affairs, and may be found here. The findings are that suicide by veterans constitutes a serious threat to the stability of an all-volunteer military force. About 1 percent of Americans have served during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but 20 percent of suicides in the United States are former service members. The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates 18 veterans die by suicide each day.

Never before have our military service members been asked to do so much. Never before have our military service members been asked – or required – to attend numerous tour of combat duty consecutively. Those changes occurred under Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in - Read 'em and weep: The Daily News, End Of The Road | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Religion & Politics: Abundant Political Irony Examined – Sandra Fluke’s testimony supports Culture of Life

Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, March 21, 2012

I’m not sure if you ever saw the actual video taped testimony of Miss Sandra Fluke.

I did.

Several times.

Not once did she ever mention herself.

Not even once.

The transcript of her testimony may be downloaded via Google Docs here: http://j.mp/GK9nqY

Anywho… when you think about it, it’s a strange irony that Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in - Did they REALLY say that?, - Lost In Space: TOTALLY Discombobulated, - Politics... that "dirty" little "game" that first begins in the home., - Read 'em and weep: The Daily News | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Making Health Insurance Obsolete

Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, March 9, 2012

Make no mistake about it, insurance companies exist to make money.

Regardless of their commercials, they neither care for you, grandma, babies, or puppy dogs… much less love you.

They love money.

In addition to raising premiums, one of the ways they make money is by not paying claims. And I mean to refer to them not paying legitimate claims by weaseling and fenagling out of paying claims such as by denying “pre-existing conditions,” or by making ludicrously asinine assertions, such as “you forgot to fill in line 39,” or something like “we didn’t receive your premium on time,” or something even worse – such as “we don’t insure on Thursdays from noon to 1:30PM.”

If money is a tool which can and ought to be used for the things it can do, then why is it important to maintain a hoard of of it? Tools are utilitarian things, which derive their exclusive value precisely because they are used, not capable of being used. Similarly, money only has value because it is a tool as a medium of exchange.

Insurance, like any other pecuniary enterprise, ought to be regulated precisely because of the risk for fraud is greater than in other businesses. That is, by nature it is more susceptible to deception. Deception in pecuniary enterprise is also known as “theft.”

Nevertheless…

Be certain you read on to learn

How a $1,000 test could destroy the health-insurance industry

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in - Faith, Religion, Goodness - What is the Soul of a man?, - Politics... that "dirty" little "game" that first begins in the home., - Read 'em and weep: The Daily News | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

 
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