"Health & Medical News"

From:
Treatment Research Institute
600 Public Ledger Building, 150 S. Independence Mall West
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Tel: (215) 399-0980
http://www.tresearch.org

Paying substance abuse treatment providers for results, not services, may lead to improved quality of care, according to the first published study of a novel performance-based contracting system implemented by the State of Delaware in 2002.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Washington — With congressional debate on an upcoming 10.1% Medicare cut to physicians stretching into the final weeks of the year, physicians’ decisions on whether to participate in the program in 2008 took on added degrees of importance and complexity.

The year-end deadline for physicians to change their participation status is important because it likely will determine how doctors will be able to bill the program and receive payment for all of 2008. If physicians do not inform their Medicare carriers in writing of their intent to change their status before Jan. 1, they will be locked into their current choices for the next 12 months — possibly under a newly reduced fee schedule.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

By Bob Curley

New Mexico’s chronic problems with alcohol were never more brutally clear than on Nov. 11, 2006, when a drunk driver speeding the wrong way down Interstate 25 slammed into a minivan, killing six members of a Las Vegas, N.M., family.

Dana Papst, 44, had been drinking on a US Airways flight and had a blood-alcohol level of 0.32 percent — four times the legal limit –? when the head-on collision occurred. The crash killed Paul Gonzales, 36; his wife, Renee Collins-Gonzales, 39; their daughters Jacqueline Gonzales, 11, and Selena Gonzales, 11; and Alisha Garcia, 17, who was Paul Gonzales’ stepdaughter.

Popularity: unranked [?]

A new study shows that alcohol dependency, major depression, and social phobia are widespread in the U.S. workforce, HealthScout News reported July 29.

According to the report, 25 percent of American workers experiences at least one mental or addictive disorder each year.

“The rates are extremely high,” said Robin Hertz, study author and a senior director of population studies at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Group, which paid for the research. “As a nation, we have to be more attentive to these types of problems. There is a mythology out there that if you are at work you are healthy. That is not really true.”

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Popularity: unranked [?]

While physicians in some states will see a break in their medical liability premiums next year, Maryland insurance officials are questioning a proposal by the state’s largest medical liability insurance carrier to issue a credit to its physician policyholders on Jan. 1, 2008.

In a Sept. 13 order, Maryland Insurance Commissioner Ralph S. Tyler halted Medical Mutual Liability Insurance Society of Maryland’s plans to pay a portion of a $68.6 million dividend to policyholders as a premium discount. The company allotted some of the money to reimburse the state because it subsidizes Medical Mutual’s premiums under a program set up in 2005 to ensure that doctors have access to medical liability insurance.

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Rhode Island’s social-host law, designed to prevent underage drinking parties, has been hobbled by language that limits its application to the host’s “residence,” thus excluding drinking in backyards or other locations on private property.

East Bay Newspapers reported Sept. 25 that lawmakers are trying to revise the bill to close the loophole. “This is supposed to be about the host who is holding the party and making alcohol available to underage kids,” said Rep. Jan Malik, the cosponsor of the original legislation who is also working on the revision. Now, says Malik, “if you hear the police are coming over, you just run into the backyard.”

Popularity: 4% [?]