Berwick: Six Categories Represent 20% Of Nation's Health Care Expenditures - Kaiser Health News/blogger's opinion

Blogger's Note/Opinion: the examples of fraud in healthcare (lots of examples internationally) are rarely, publicly connected to the bottom line, so congrats to Berwick on this issue; if all medical fraud activity/costs were accounted directly in healthcare financial bottom-lines, then free healthcare for all would be available, someone (not me) should take on this project; eg: Ontario e-health scandal; executive buyouts, U.S. clinics defraud of Medicare claims (not accounting errors but outright fraud) ............Berwick's estimate is most likely low but what is not in this particular article is the cost of under-treatment eg. in our case of ovarian cancer the costs of second primary debulking surgery (except to say included in poor care delivery possibly)


Berwick: Six Categories Represent 20% Of Nation's Health Care Expenditures - Kaiser Health News

Berwick: Six Categories Represent 20% Of Nation's Health Care Expenditures

Topics: Health Costs, Quality

Apr 11, 2012

Modern Healthcare: Berwick Targets Waste In Healthcare Expenditures

In an article in the April 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Donald Berwick, former CMS administrator and current senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and Andrew Hackbarth, an assistant policy analyst for the RAND Corp., listed six categories of waste they say represent more than 20% of the nation's ever-increasing healthcare expenditures... Those six areas—fraud and abuse, poor care coordination, failures of care delivery, overtreatment, administrative complexity and overpricing of services—represent enormous opportunities for cost-cutting and improvement, the authors said (McKinney, 4/10).

This is part of Kaiser Health News' Daily Report - a summary of health policy coverage from more than 300 news organizations. The full summary of the day's news can be found here and you can sign up for e-mail subscriptions to the Daily Report here. In addition, our staff of reporters and correspondents file original stories each day, which you can find on our home pag

Quest, Lab Corp. Fall (financial) After Fraud Whistle-Blower Interview - Bloomberg

Quest, Lab Corp. Fall After Fraud Whistle-Blower Interview - Bloomberg

PCORI Paddles the Potomac (healthcare systems/dysfunction....)

By Merrill Goozner
Merrill Goozner has been writing about economics and health care for many years. The former chief economics correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, Merrill has written for a long list of publications including the New York Times, The American Prospect, The Washington Post and The Fiscal Times. You can read more pieces by him at GoozNews.

PCORI Paddles the Potomac:

Cynics say Washington is the city where good ideas go to die. A promising strategy for holding down health care costs in the Obama administration’s reform bill – providing patients and doctors with authoritative information on what works best in health care – should provide a classic test of that proposition, assuming the law survives the next election.
Experts estimate anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of the health care that Americans receive is wasted. It is either ineffective or does more harm than good. To put that in perspective, waste costs anywhere from $250 billion and $750 billion a year, or as much as three-fourths of the annual federal deficit.
Yet every effort to curb wasteful spending (health care fraud, though pervasive, is estimated at less than a quarter of the total) has come up short.

Physician Guilty of Medicare Fraud Put Patients at Risk - Trampling the Hippocratic Oath "On the Way to the Bank"

BMJ Group blogs: Liz Wager: Do we need to rethink our approaches to research misconduct and research integrity?

"....Having failed to start a reasonable conversation about research integrity, based on major scandals, we see no point in trying to address so-called “minor” offences. But as Iain Chalmers said at the meeting, “lesser offences,” such as failing to publish research and publishing welcome results more often than disappointing results, harms many more patients than the high profile scandals (since it distorts the evidence on which guidelines and clinical practice are based). While plagiarism may be a nasty symptom of a sick system, it has probably never killed anybody while unreliable guidelines and misguided research undoubtedly have....."

Resveratrol and Fraud - Forbes (note: long article)

PLoS Medicine: Being the Ghost in the Machine: A Medical Ghostwriter's Personal View

"Introduction

Ethical concerns about medical ghostwriting have been directed primarily at “guest” authors and the pharmaceutical companies that pay them. One voice that is largely missing is that of the ghostwriters themselves who, after all, create the documents that are in the ethical and legal crosshairs. Without them, one could argue, there can be no fraud, because it is they who create the fraudulent product.
For almost 11 years, I worked as a medical writer, creating a variety of pieces including the occasional ghostwritten article. For the most part, I never saw the finished paper, nor did I care to. This article describes what I did, why I did it, why I stopped doing it, and what I think might be done about the problem of fraud in authorship......"cont'd

Cancer, Fraud, and Bad Biotech! (from former science student....)

Note: see blog's comment section (right hand sidebar - scroll down) and therefore this link

excerpt from website:
FRAUD IS STILL FRAUD AND NO EXCUSE TO STEAL RESEARCH FROM THE PUBLIC!

This is Everyone's Opportunity to Hold Corrupt Businessmen Accountable and Help Make Society Better.

Dear Reader, when I first started this journey I was a student who believed I could contribute to society by discovering science of medical value. I did just that , but to my complete amazement I found myself in trouble with corrupt people...........cont'd

U.S. FDA - Cracking Down on Health Fraud - "Natural Healer"

‘Natural Healer' Convicted

In August 2006, a federal judge sentenced John E. Curran to 12.5 years in prison for fraud and money laundering. Promoting himself as a natural healer and posing as a medical doctor, Curran operated the Northeastern Institute for Advanced Natural Healing in Providence, R.I. He made false claims about his qualifications, educational background, and training.
Curran sold bogus products called "E-water" and "Green Drink." In promotional materials, Curran claimed to have cured people of cancer. One 17-year-old girl with ovarian cancer reportedly drank only Green Drink, a powdered vegetable drink, in the last weeks of her life.
In other instances, Curran used scare diagnosis tactics so that he could prescribe the phony cures to healthy people. Curran sold about 1.4 million dollars' worth of treatment and products after making his false diagnoses. He told patients they had "live parasites" in their blood, reduced blood cell counts, and ruined immune systems.

Ottawa charity director charged with $1M fraud (not cancer)

Stem cell scientists launch effort to prevent fraudulent treatment - Office of Communications & Public Affairs - Stanford University School of Medicine

"... The use of quotes from well-regarded stem cell scientists and physicians is not uncommon on unscrupulous Internet websites, according to Weissman. Frequently these experts are unaware that their names are being used, and the quotes are fabricated or taken out-of-context from some other source.

As a result of the task force’s efforts to publicize these and other abuses, the ISSCR recently launched a publicly available website (www.closerlookatstemcells.org) where patients can learn more about stem cell biology, learn what questions to ask of potential clinics, and even submit a specific website for further investigation by the ISSCR."