Word: treatments
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Another, subtler problem can be the difference between what are known as surrogate outcomes and patient outcomes. A new drug or treatment may reliably lower cholesterol, say, or reduce the size of a tumor - these are surrogate outcomes - and the drug-maker would call that a success. But the ultimate goal of treatment isn't simply to give you lab results you can boast about, it's to make you feel better and live longer; those are the patient outcomes. Sometimes though, good surrogate outcomes don't lead to good patient outcomes. Hormone replacement therapy, for example, raises good cholesterol...
...offer two more tools. The first is a simple guide to credible sources of health stats, including the Center for Medical Consumers and Informed Health Online. The second is a pair of simple questions we should all ask ourselves before we make a medical decision: Does the drug or treatment we're considering have any important risks and does it offer a reasonably good chance of doing us real good? A yes to the first and a no to the second is bad news; a no to the first and a yes to the second is good news...
...Most health-care providers rarely turn away patients in need of medical care. This is particularly true of hospitals, whose emergency rooms are mandated by federal law to provide treatment regardless of a person's ability to pay. That leads to millions of dollars in unpaid medical bills each year. Thus, when providers negotiate contracts with HMOs, for instance, they try to recoup some of those losses by raising prices for insured patients, which in turn leads to higher premiums. Because insurance markets are state-by-state entities with disparate regulations, residents of certain states - such as Montana, West Virginia...
...suggests, though, is that providers often pass along the cost of treating the uninsured to their insured patients. Its analysis found that families pay, on average, as much as $1,100 extra and individuals $410 extra in health-care premiums each year in order to cover the cost of treatment to uninsured patients who cannot afford to pay their bills. That amounts to as much as 8% higher premiums due to the lack of universal health care in the U.S. "So many Americans think that universal coverage is for the uninsured," says Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat...
...fell into this category. One-quarter of the infants needed general surgery, while 13% required some type of orthopedic procedure. Only 1% of the infants who had surgery needed a neurological procedure. That suggests that some aspect of the operation or anesthesia - and not the condition that required surgical treatment - could have influenced the babies' cognitive development. (See TIME's Pictures of the Week...