Word: america
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...some cases - than Americans on health care annually, and often with better outcomes. The good news is that without reassembling its entire health-care system, there are many relatively simple measures that could help the U.S. get a handle on soaring costs - and keep its population healthier, too. America, here is your prescription...
President Obama recently pledged $19 billion to computerize America's medical records by 2014. Denmark has already made the transition. The country has a centralized computer database to which 98% of primary care physicians, all hospital physicians and all pharmacists now have access. While basic records go back to 1977, a detailed history is available of all "patient contacts" since 2000. A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund, a health-care-reform nonprofit, rated the country's health-care IT systems as the most efficient in the world, with computerized record-keeping saving Danish physicians an average 50 minutes...
...challenge is finding the funding to implement such schemes. In America's health system, there are few financial incentives for providers to take proactive measures to keep people healthy: the longer and more extensively a doctor or hospital treats a patient, the more income they recoup. That's why the American College of Physicians and others are calling for reform in health-care reimbursement, with the Federal Government and large insurance companies setting up "Patient Centered Medical Homes" in which a portion of doctors' pay will be linked to performance targets. As in Germany, these homes will target chronic diseases...
Peter Pitts of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest says higher prices are a risk America will have to take. "Because NICE is concerned about saving money and not what's in the best interest of the patient, its methods are not only imprudent, they are unethical," he says, arguing that pharmaceutical firms use profits to fund research and development. Rawlins has a different take. "All health-care systems have implicitly, if not explicitly, adopted some form of cost control. In the U.S. you do it by not providing health care to some people. That's a rather...
...stimulus package approved by the U.S. Congress in February is just 6% of GDP. While upwards of 75% of Chinese spending will go toward infrastructure, just 10% of U.S. spending will. The difference to an extent reflects the fact that the nations are at different stages of economic development: America's railroad networks were built in the 19th century (and show it), and its interstate-highway system was mainly constructed in the 1950s and '60s. But it also speaks to the sheer scale of China's ambition to modernize itself...