At what age should women start having mammograms?

Bloomberg recently reported a story that highlighted the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force on yearly mammograms for women aged 40 and above. According to the story, the guidelines released by the task force suggested that annual mammograms for most women in their 40s have more drawbacks than benefits and therefore, women should wait until age 50 to start getting breast cancer screening tests every two years.

Here is the story:

November 17, 2009

Annual mammograms for most women in their 40s have more drawbacks than benefits, said a panel of U.S. doctors that recommended women wait until age 50 to start getting breast cancer screening tests every two years.

The change in guidelines released by the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force, a government-backed physician group, said women in their 40s are more likely to get false-positive tests that can lead to unnecessary biopsies and anxiety. The recommendations, which also said that self-examinations were unnecessary, don’t apply to women who carry a high risk for breast cancer. Those women should talk to their doctors about when to get screening, the panel said.

The new guidelines, published yesterday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, pit the task force against the American Cancer Society, which insisted doctors should still advise women to undergo routine annual screening starting at age 40. About 64 percent of women ages 40 to 49 had an X-ray of their breasts during the past two years, the panel’s report said.

“This is not a blanket recommendation not to worry until age 50,” said Diana Petitti, a disease epidemiologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, and vice chair of the panel. “It’s a recommendation to have a discussion with your physician to better understand the trade-offs between starting exams now and starting later.”

Imaging machines for mammograms, and related supplies, are marketed by Fairfield, Connecticut-based General Electric Co., Bedford, Massachusetts-based Hologic Inc. and Munich-based Siemens AG.

Insurer Coverage

J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, the American Cancer Society’s deputy chief medical officer, said the panel’s guidelines may affect insurance payouts. ‘Our hope is that insurers will not make any change in coverage,” Lichtenfeld said.

WellPoint Inc., the top U.S. health insurer by enrollment with 34 million members, pays for annual mammograms for women age 40 in the majority of its health plans. The Indianapolis- based company periodically reviews its reimbursement policies and “doesn’t adhere to any one source” for guidance, said Jill Becher, a company spokeswoman in Milwaukee.

The new guidelines, if widely adopted by physicians and insurers, could reduce the number of U.S. mammogram screenings by 58 percent, from the current 37.2 million annually to 15.6 million under a “worst-case scenario,” Junaid Husain, a Boston-based analyst at Soleil Securities, wrote in a note to investors today.

Detecting Cancer

Mammograms, self-breast examinations, and doctor’s exams are the three main forms of detecting breast cancer. The task force said there was no evidence that self-exams reduce breast- cancer deaths, and insufficient information exists to recommend that doctors do routine physical exams.

The mammograms are used to check for breast cancer in women who have no signs or symptoms of the disease, and also to check for breast cancer after a lump or other signs of cancer have been found, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths among U.S. women, after lung cancer, killing 40,480 women in 2008, according to the task force report.

The task force analyzed published research and developed computer-simulation models to evaluate the likely health outcomes if mammograms were begun at certain ages and done every one or two years.

Deaths, False Positive Tests

The study confirmed earlier research that women who have mammograms die less frequently of breast cancer than those who don’t have the tests. About two deaths per 1,000 women are averted if women begin annual screenings rather than exams every two years starting at age 40, the task force estimated.

It also estimated that women who begin getting mammograms at 40 will have about 60 percent more false positive results per 1,000 exams than women who start screenings at age 50. A false positive, in which an abnormality is seen that proves not to be cancer, typically leads to additional screenings and tissue biopsies, the panel’s researchers said.

The cancer society challenged the reliability of the task force study’s methods.

“We are reluctant to recommend changing a proven program that has helped to save lives,” Lichtenfeld said. The society questions whether the task’s force computer modeling “is sufficiently sophisticated and accurate enough,” he said.

High-Risk Women

The recommendations aren’t intended for women older than 40 who have a higher risk for breast cancer. Increased risk can come from having a gene mutation linked to breast cancer or having been exposed often to chest radiation, which can raise the probability of breast cancer.

The task force said it didn’t make recommendations for these higher-risk groups because it lacked sufficient data to know the benefits of more frequent screening tests.

Women’s health groups varied in their responses to the new guidelines.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the Dallas-based breast cancer advocacy group, said it won’t change its recommendation that women ages 40 to 49 get annual mammograms. “We would not want to see a change in policy or reimbursement for screening mammography at this time,” said Eric Winer, the group’s chief scientific adviser, in a statement.

The task force’s recommendations were applauded by the National Breast Cancer Coalition, a Washington-based advocacy group, which said the guidelines support its position.

‘Deserve the Truth’

“Women deserve the truth even when it is complicated,” said Fran Visco, the coalition’s president, in a statement. “They can accept it.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists rejected the task force’s recommendations, maintaining its guidelines that women in their 40s be screened every one to two years and women age 50 and older get annual exams, according to a statement issued by the group on Monday.

Researchers and physicians know that results from the X- rays aren’t as reliable in younger women as in older women. Women in their 40s typically have denser breast tissue, making it more difficult for technicians to determine if an image is normal or cancerous.

After women enter menopause, typically about age 50, the breast tissue becomes less dense and more fat, and the X-rays can be more accurately interpreted, said Susan Love, president and medical director of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation in Santa Monica, California.

‘Long Overdue’

The panel’s suggestions for women ages 40 to 49 are “long overdue,” said Love in a telephone interview. “Most countries in the world do not do mammography screening until age 50.”

“There is a lot of anxiety created when someone tells you that there is something that showed up in a test,” said Karla Kerlikowske, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center who wrote an editorial accompanying the task force report.

Subsequent exams expose women to more radiation, and although biopsies are “low risk,” some patients develop infections or experience pain and bruises, she said.

Screening women ages 50 to 74 every two years “achieves most of the benefit of annual screening with less harm,” the task force said. Now women in the older age group get a mammogram, on average, every 14 months, according to the report.

In forming its guidelines, the task force’s “biggest concern” was that women would be confused by conflicting advice from health experts or wrongly interpret the panel’s message as a blanket recommendation for those ages 40 to 49 to forego screening until they turn 50, Petitti said.

Risks, Preferences

Instead, decisions by women younger than 50 and their doctors should be based on “the risk for breast cancer and preferences about the benefits and harms” the task force wrote in the study.

Although the recommendations are “very clear and thoughtful,” women are likely to be confused by the different advice of health experts, Kerlikowske said.

It may be difficult to persuade many women in their 40s who have been told by their doctors for years that annual screenings are beneficial to accept the panel’s recommendations, said the cancer society’s Lichtenfeld.

“The task force is saying you can get 70 percent of the benefit if you get a mammogram every two years compared with every year,” Lichtenfeld said. “There will be women who say, ‘I want 100 percent of the benefit.’”

Source: Bloomberg

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Medical Tourism Facilitator Healthbase Announces Partnership with JCI Accredited Hospital in Germany

Healthbase, the leading US-based medical tourism provider, has partnered with a JCI accredited German hospital in order to bring wider options and greater convenience to Americans, Canadians, Europeans and others looking for affordable, timely and high quality medical and dental treatments.

Healthbase Online Inc., the leading and award-winning medical tourism facilitator based in Boston, MA, has announced partnership with a Joint Commission International accredited hospital in Germany. With the addition of this JCI accredited hospital, Healthbase now has a network of over 100 health care and dental care providers spread across 18 countries. For the medical tourist it means more choices, wider variety and greater convenience.

According to Saroja Mohanasundaram, CEO of Healthbase, “With growing demands from our consumer base for a quality tertiary medical care center in Europe, we are excited to have our newest Germany-based healthcare provider onboard. Our new member provider is JCI-accredited thereby giving the peace of mind to our patients regarding the high standards of quality that will be delivered by it. Our German provider offers a full complement of services and is an excellent choice for patients looking for orthopedic, spinal and bariatric treatments at a much discounted rate compared to USA and much faster access to service compared to that offered by public health care systems in Canada or the UK.”

For patients from Europe, especially from the European Union (EU), this would be as good as going to a local hospital with the advantage of high or higher standard of service and without the inconvenience of the infamous waitlists as seen in government-sponsored healthcare systems such as the National Health Service or NHS in the United Kingdom.

The hospital offers procedures like joint replacement procedures (such as hip replacement surgery and knee replacement surgery), spinal procedures (such as spine fusion surgery and artificial disc replacement surgery), and weight-loss procedures (such as lap band surgery, gastric bypass or RNY procedure and gastric sleeve surgery), among hundreds of other procedures.

The favorable geographical location of Germany means that for patients coming from North America the flight times are shorter compared to other famous medical tourism destinations such as those in Asia. For those traveling from other European countries it is at a stone’s throw.

Mohanasundaram adds, “We have carefully chosen our German provider after a rigorous selection process keeping in mind all aspects of affordable, safe and top quality medical tourism care. Patients can expect as much as 50 to 70% less cost compared to the cost of care in other developed countries such as the United States. Also, the staffs at our German provider speak English, thus, making communication easy.”

Healthbase has the biggest and geographically most expanded network of healthcare and dental care providers in the industry. Patients have a wide selection of destinations to choose from for their low cost high quality medical care and dental care needs. These include Germany, India, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, New Zealand, Jordan, Turkey, Hungary, Belgium, Spain, Costa Rica, Panama, Brazil, Mexico, and USA.

Healthbase serves the American, Canadian, European, African, Asian, Middle-Eastern and Asia Pacific markets, and offers more than 200 procedures.

About Healthbase Online Inc.:
Healthbase, an award-winning US-based medical tourism and dental tourism facilitator, is a one-stop source for global medical and dental choices, connecting patients to leading internationally accredited healthcare providers in 18 countries including India, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, Turkey, Germany, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico and USA. Healthbase caters to individual consumers, self-funded businesses, insurers, benefits plan consultants, third party administrators and those using Consumer Directed Healthcare Plans (CDHPs) or voluntary benefit plans. Healthbase coordinates over 200 procedures in various categories like orthopedic, spinal, cardiac, bariatric, urology, oncology, dental, cosmetic and general surgery. Some of the common procedures offered are Birmingham hip resurfacing, total hip replacement, knee replacement, ACL repair, rotator cuff surgery, spinal fusion, spinal disk replacement, heart bypass surgery, lap band, gastric bypass, cancer treatment, liposuction, dental implants, crowns, bridges, etc. for a fraction of the cost in the US with equal or superior outcomes. To ensure that patients receive the best care possible, Healthbase works mainly with hospitals that have international accreditations like JCI. To learn more, call 1-888-691-4584, email info.hb @ healthbase.com or visit http://www.healthbase.com.

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No country has perfect system, but there are lessons to learn

An excellent article appeared recently in Dallas News that talked about the health care systems in other Western countries and what America can learn from them to resolve its health care woes. Here is the article for a good read…

Tackling the high cost of health care is politically bruising and difficult work around the world. Among developed countries, only the Norwegians rival our level of spending. The French wrestle with rising costs every year. The Canadians are searching for a better model, and have had their eyes on France. But for all their troubles, the French and the Canadians – two bogeymen in the American reform debate – spend much less and live longer than we Americans.

In the last five years, I’ve spent time reporting on health care in 10 other countries to see what they might offer in the way of suggestions to improve the American way of medicine. No one has a perfect system. No one has a permanent solution. But medical spending can be slowed without sacrificing quality. Some do it with government price controls and government doctors, while some do it with government acting as a referee. Neither approach is fatal to medical quality.

The Swiss, the French and the Canadians all use very different approaches to get at the problem, but they get there. And when all else fails, there’s still medical tourism. You can get heart bypass surgery, with a tour of the Taj Mahal, in India for less than 10 percent of the U.S. cost – plus a year’s supply of pharmaceuticals.

I met Carlo Gislimberti, a New Mexico restaurateur, in New Delhi in 2005 while he was waiting for a coronary bypass at the Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre. He’d had three heart attacks. He had no health insurance. His Albuquerque hospital wanted $120,000 for the operation.

Escorts did the job for less than $12,000.

“It was an absolutely wonderful experience with wonderful results,” Gislimberti said last week when I called him in Santa Fe.

“There was only one thing – the luxury is not there. But the knowledge, the quality of nursing, it was absolutely beyond belief. … I would still today recommend to all the people in my predicament to go abroad.”

Medical tourism is no longer a quirky answer for the desperate and uninsured. The health-consulting arm of Deloitte estimates 1.6 million Americans will seek medical treatment in another country this year. U.S. health insurers, looking for ways to lower costs, are exploring policies that cover such travel.

Gislimberti, now 64, sold his restaurant and paints for a living. His heart ailments qualified him for disability under Social Security, and last year he was accepted under Medicare. He had a pacemaker installed by his Albuquerque hospital in an operation last May.

One thing he learned: “If you have insurance, this country is the greatest. But it you don’t have insurance, this is a Third World country.”

Another lesson: Price competition is coming. A study by the McKinsey Global Institute consulting group last fall found that Americans pay 50 percent to 60 percent higher charges for pharmaceuticals, health insurance overhead and physician services than anyone else in the world. That could make medical tourism irresistible, and a competitive risk to the U.S. medical establishment.

Switzerland is intriguing because employers have gotten out of the insurance business. The Swiss government mandates personal health insurance. Everyone shops among scores of insurance companies to buy a policy. The insurers must offer everyone a basic policy and can’t exclude anyone. The government offers subsidies to people who can’t afford a policy, and fines people who don’t get one.

Swiss medical fees are set in annual negotiations between health care providers and insurers that must win the approval of the canton parliament. (Insurers and hospital chains do the same thing here, but those negotiations are seldom among equals and don’t have a referee like the canton parliament.)

One result of the Swiss approach is that consumers gravitate toward high-deductible policies – insurance that costs less per month, but takes more out of your wallet when you see a doctor. And because they’re paying for it, the Swiss are more cost-conscious health consumers. The Swiss spend about a third less than Americans for medical care.

France and Canada both have national health insurance. In France, this is like Medicare for all. There’s a gap of 30 percent to 40 percent between what the government insurance covers and what health care costs, so a lively market exists for private, supplemental insurance policies.

Doctors can choose compensation under a government schedule revised every year, or they can charge what they like – and forgo a government pension.

Canadians may, famously, wait for nonurgent treatments and surgeries. But they’re quicker to rally around a public health issue like obesity, because the insurance mechanism is part of the provincial government.

“Our wait lists are coming down, but they’re still substantially more than yours,” said Canadian health economist Steven Lewis. “But your system is twice as expensive. It doesn’t insure 45 million people, it underinsures another 45 million, and overall you have a less healthy population. Is that worth sustaining?”

In the current health care debate in Washington, no one argues that we should throw out the U.S. health care model for an import. There are models closer to home – like Temple’s Scott & White – worth emulating.

But there are plenty of places that spend less for equal or better care. It can be done.

By Jim Landers

Further reading:
Medical tourism
Domestic medical tourism
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New England leads, the South rated worst on health care scorecard

Vermont leads the nation in the delivery of its health care, while Mississippi is rated the worst, according to a non-partisan study that compares all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Vermont, Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Maine and New Hampshire ranked 1 to 5 in 38 indicators of health care.

At the bottom were Mississippi, along with Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Nevada and Texas.

The Commonwealth Fund Commission’s “Scorecard on Health System Performance,” rated the states on access, quality, costs and health outcomes in a follow up to their 2007 report.

Overall, the states which did best on the Commonwealth scorecard were in New England and the upper Midwest, and the worst states were in the South.

Vermont, with only 640,000 residents, has nearly universal health care coverage with 93 percent insured. Its innovative “Blue Print for Health” focuses on prevention of chronic diseases.

“We’re small. There are 19 cities larger than the state of Vermont,” said Susan Besio, director for health care reform and Medicaid for Vermont.

“But I believe there is something unique about Vermont in terms of its culture,” she told ABCNews.com. “We want to take care of each other and we are a healthy state.”

In Mississippi, however, about 20 percent are uninsured despite having some of the highest rates of hypertension, diabetes and asthma.

According to the report, only 35.7 percent of adults 50 or over in Mississippi receive recommended screening and preventive care.

“When you compare Mississippi on almost any socio-economic profile, we are a struggling population that has a large percentage of low-income individuals, high unemployment rates, low rate of education,” said Robert Pugh, director of the Mississippi Primary Health Care Association.

The scorecard “paints a picture of health care systems under stress, with deteriorating health insurance coverage for adults and rising health care costs,” according to co-author Cathy Schoen, who is senior vice president of the commission.

“Where you live matters for access, quality of care and whether you live a long and healthy life. These wide and persistent gaps among states highlight the need for national reforms and federal action to support states.”

For example, 32 percent of working-age adults in Texas are uninsured, compared to only 7 percent in Massachusetts in the most recent survey.

“It’s very hard to have a high performing health care system and hospitals that do well for everyone if you have a high rate of uninsured in the state,” said Schoen.

In 1999-00, there were only two states with 23 percent or more of adults uninsured. But by 2007-2008 there were nine.

Children fared much better, due in large part to the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) under Medicaid. The number of states with 16 percent or more of children uninsured dropped from nine to three during the same time period.

Other findings of the report were that in a, costs rose and quality improved in areas where outcomes were reported to the public.

Vermont’s ‘Blue Print For Health’ A Model

The Green Mountain state was cited for its model “Blue Print” program. Launched by Republican Gov. Jim Douglas, it covers everything from teaching children healthy eating to helping seniors stay in their homes rather than going to costly nursing homes.

“You betcha, I feel good about the reforms we put in place,” Douglas told ABCNews.com. “It’s centered on quality and containing costs. Care shouldn’t start in the emergency room.”

All Vermonters are encouraged to have yearly exams and adults are notified when they are due for check-ups.

Douglas talks to children about “getting off the couch” and set an example just this week by joining elementary students on a walk to school.

With the second oldest population in the nation, Vermont subsizes care for seniors and the disabled to defray the costs of home care. Nursing home beds were reduced by 200 last year.

In one pilot program, electronic medical records can avert expensive tests like MRIs and x-rays. One emergency room doctor seeing a woman with stomach pains discovered in her online medication history that she had not filled her prescription for ulcer medicine.

“It takes time and so a lot of the fruits come from years of work and planning and cooperation,” said Douglas.

Health Care Affects a State’s Economy

But Mississippi, with the highest infant mortality and low birth rates in the nation, makes access to these Medicaid programs more difficult, according to Roy Mitchell, director of the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program (MHAP).

“I am not at all surprised we were 51st on the list,” he told ABCNews.com. “We are last on several health indicators. Our policy makers work hard at being last.”

Despite one of the highest matches of federal to state dollars in Medicaid funding, the state mandates “face-to-face” eligibility, requiring all new applicants and those reapplying for benefits to come in for an interview.

“As a direct result, 65,000 children have fallen off the rolls,” Mitchell said.

“Mississippi does virtually no outreach at all. They don’t publish where these face to face stations are and what times,” he said. “It’s a bureaucratic maze even to find out where to go. And when they get there they don’t have a certain document.”

Of those, about 77 percent would be eligible, he said. “It’s touted as fraud prevention.”

These disparities between the highest and lowest ranked states could be alleviated with national reform, according to Commonwealth.

The report emphasizes the need for insurance reform that rewards good outcomes, payment reform with an emphasis on prevention and advanced information systems that travel with the patient from physician to physician, saving time, money and preventing errors.

“What the scorecard is showing is that we have a system under stress, no matter where we live,” said co-author Schoen. “The costs are rising more than people’s incomes. We need to act.”

Schoen said she has hope for reform. “There is real leadership and people are taking reform seriously.”

Source: ABC News

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Facing aging without health insurance

We all know the facts and the figures. About 46 to 47 million Americans are uninsured and with the economic recession not yet over, several more are expected to join the ranks.

The Congress is still debating over a national health care reform which no one knows will lead to what consequences. So, given the current state of affairs, the big question still looms – Who takes care of you when something major comes up? Or, worse yet, What happens if you are aging, start having health problems and no insurance wants to cover you even if you are willing to purchase the most expensive catastrophic policy?

NPR recently ran the story of a 58-year old uninsured American who landed himself into exactly this sort of a situation. Read on…

Fernando Arriola spends his days keeping track of four or five construction projects, and his nights praying for good health. The New Orleans home builder is one of the 46 million people in this country who don’t have health insurance.

Four years ago Arriola, 58, bought a friend’s contracting business, just as New Orleans was starting to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. He named it New Beginnings Enterprises.

“It was a new beginning for me; it was a new beginning for the city; it was a new beginning for a lot of people we were working with,” he says.

And business has been good. He does mostly residential work, like the quaint mother-in-law cottage in the Garden District where his crew is laying tile and putting on the finishing touches.

Making A Living, But Not Enough For Insurance

Arriola makes about $50,000 a year and says he enjoys working for himself. But what he’s missing is the comprehensive health coverage he had at his former job as a sales manager.

Ever since he’s been self-employed, Arriola has been on a health insurance roller coaster. Initially, he bought a standard policy with a $1,000 deductible to cover his family. Then, when business slowed down and money got tight, he decided to temporarily drop the coverage. When he tried to reinstate it, he could only afford a catastrophic plan.

“I was paying $900 a month for a $5,000 deductible that would cover nothing until I hit that $5,000. So I was paying in essence $15,000 before I had one penny covered. And that was too expensive,” Arriola says.

So he dropped that coverage, only to have second thoughts. And when he tried to get it back, he was denied even the expensive catastrophic policy. Arriola doesn’t know exactly why, but he acknowledges that he and his wife both have high blood pressure and are approaching 60.

“Insurance is nothing more than just a business. And they try to limit their liabilities. So where there’s an older person, they don’t want to cover it,” he says.

Aging Without Coverage

Maria Arriola doesn’t think it’s fair that after years of paying for coverage and not having many claims, now, when they are starting to have health problems, they can’t get insurance.

“There’s nothing you can do about that. As you get older things don’t work so well, so…” she says.

The Arriolas did buy a policy for their two daughters, ages 22 and 16. But Fernando and Maria are uninsured. They pay for doctor visits and prescriptions out of pocket.

If something major comes up, Arriola says he would leave the country for medical services. Arriola is a naturalized citizen and has lived in New Orleans since 1970. But last year, he traveled to his native Guatemala for arthroscopic knee surgery. It cost him less than $1,000.

“Over here [it] would cost me thousands. They have just as good of doctors as they have over here. Most of them graduated from here,” he says.

Not Waiting For Congress To Fix

As for the debate on Capitol Hill over health care reform, Arriola takes a businessman’s approach to the issue: Open up the marketplace, he says, and create a national playing field so consumers will have more options.

But he does not have faith that Congress will come up with a fix because of partisan politics. So, in the meantime, he’s working to do something locally as a member of the board of directors for the New Orleans Faith and Health Alliance. The group is trying to start a health clinic in unused classroom space at a midcity church. Patients would pay based on their income.

“The purpose is to be able to provide the working uninsured medical services. There is definitely a need. I’m a perfect example of it,” Arriola says.

The alliance hopes to start providing care this fall. Arriola plans to sign up. In the meantime, he prays that nothing serious happens. The way the system works now, he says, he’d have to experience a major calamity to get coverage.

“I would have to go into the hospital, I would have to lose my house, I will have to lose all my savings, lose everything for the government to be able to help me. So 40 years of work, 40 years of struggle has to come to nothing. I have to be totally destitute in order for me to be able to get some help.”

Arriola says he doesn’t want anybody to give him anything. He just wants to be able to afford health insurance.

“There has to be a way,” he says.
Source: NPR

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Peeking inside your doctor’s notes

Almost all of us have been to the doctor at some point or the other in our lives. One of the common things you would have noted in your meetings with your doctor is him scribbling down notes. But, have you wondered what he writes in such notes? Do you think you should be allowed to see those notes? And, are you prepared to see what your doctor might have written about your meeting and your physiological and psychological conditions?

A lot of what’s in that note is objective stuff about your blood pressure, weight and blood count. But often your doctor puts down subjective impressions.

Did you seem down? Anxious? Angry? Drinking too much? Not so mentally sharp? Physicians also may speculate about a tentative diagnosis – maybe a scary one – they haven’t shared with you.

What do you think doctors would feel about letting patients see their notes? As you would guess, there are mixed opinions. Some feel comfortable while others don’t. It ranges from ‘Well, transparency is here, this will be good for patients, they’ll be more actively involved in their care, this is a terrific idea,‘ to ‘This is the worst thing I’ve ever heard of.‘

Doctors’ notes are not really secret anyway. Other doctors see them. Insurance companies and lawyers do. And under a 1996 federal law called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, patients have every right to see their complete medical records. But as Dr. Tom Delbanco of Harvard Medical School (HMS) puts it, “You can get it but we do everything in the world to make sure you don’t get it. The medical record has traditionally been viewed by the medical establishment as something that they own. They think: ‘It’s my private notes. This is my stuff.’”

Check out below for some other kinds of opinions that different doctors share:

• “Information should be accessible, but that will mean more work for doctors who may need to explain their notes to patients.”
• “My hope is that it will be a method of communicating with patients, so patients can see what we’re thinking, where our head is, what our plans are, why we’re suggesting what we do.”
• “We may be less candid. We may not as accurately describe the mood of the patient, the tenor of the encounter, for fear that we may get someone perhaps already a little angry during the encounter – more so after they log on and read the note that I just finished.”
• “Physicians are scared of this kind of thing. But the big, broad directions are clear. Which is: Patients have to be at the center of their care more and more. That doesn’t mean patients call the shots. But patients really have to be a team member. To be a team member, they’ve got to see the playbook. And doctors will have to learn to be respectful in the way they write their notes in some situation.”
• “If there’s some delicate problem, doctors shouldn’t dodge that topic, and patients should be prepared to see some things which may be a little painful for them to confront too.”

Your doctor’s reservations to this idea are understandable:

• It will be more work for them, because patients will call up wanting to know what something means, or demanding corrections.
• It might lead to more lawsuits.
• It might scare the hell out of patients.

Source: Adapted from the NPR story – “Doctors Don’t Agree On Letting Patients See Notes” by Richard Knox

For affordable and quality medical care in the United States, check out domestic medical tourism. For surgery abroad, check out medical tourism.

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Medical Tourism Gets a Boost in the Philippines

Like much of the world, the Philippine economy has seen a downturn in the last few years, with falling tourism revenue, poor investment prospects and a lack of overseas employment opportunities. Officials in the country are turning to medical tourism as a potential solution to some of their economic woes, however, and are hoping it will bring in new business, technology and interest in their country.

Over the past few years the Department of Tourism and the Department of Health have been working together to promote the Philippines as the hotspot among Asia’s myriad of medical tourism destinations. Drawing in these guests can be big business for a failing economy, as the government has estimated that the average visitor to the country for medical tourism spends around $3,500 during his or her stay. In hard times, those kinds of numbers and that kind of spending is hard to come by.

That reason, among others, is the driving force behind the medical summit that the Department of Tourism will be holding this October to discuss the future of medical tourism in Southeast Asia. Officials are hoping it will bring new interest to the growing field in the country and situate the Filipino care facilities as some of the best quality and highest value in the world.

While medical tourism in the Philippines has seen a growth in recent years, it still has some major issues and concerns from foreign visitors to address. The country has seen sanctions for the large number of poor Filipinos who sell organs like kidneys to wealthy Americans who are willing to pay for them. Part of the initiative of the summit is to change the image of the country and assure future patients that concerns like these are being resolved and the country doesn’t offer third-world health care but instead state of the art medical facilities.

Currently, the Philippines is home to many specialty facilities offering care from dental work to organ transplants, having some of the oldest heart, lung and kidney transplant centers in the region. Officials also want to promote the post-surgical care they can offer with health spas and wellness facilities springing up as well.

Of course, Filipino officials aren’t ignoring what is possibly the biggest draw for foreign visitors: low cost health care. In many cases, operations abroad cost a fraction of what they would at home, allowing those without insurance to get the health care they need without incurring life long debt.

This post was contributed by Hannah Watson, who writes about the online nursing program.

For cheap surgery in the Philippines, contact Healthbase.

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Medicare coverage for elderly Americans in Mexico: How feasible is it?

The rising cost of health care in the United States is forcing an increasing number of U.S. citizens to turn their sights on Mexico for expert and cost-effective medical attention. But what about the health care for the elderly Americans who are already residing in Mexico? Should they be covered by Medicare in Mexico or should they have to fly back to America every time they need major medical care? Can the medical care providers in Mexico be trusted with the health of American seniors? Here’s an excellent read that recently appeared in a Mexican newspaper.

According to Paul Crist, the founder and president of Americans for Medicare for Mexico (AMMAC), a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing Medicare coverage to seniors living in Mexico, of the 800,000 American citizens living in Mexico approximately 200,000 are over 60 years old and thus are at or near eligibility for Medicare benefits.

Christ has lobbied 85 members of the U.S. Congress and prepared a 34-page proposal in which he outlines the pros of extending Medicare to Mexico. Medicare is now spending 6,700 dollars per year per beneficiary in the United States. For the same care in Mexico, Crist estimates that it will spend only 3,400 dollars, which translates to a very substantial saving.

Crist says that if Medicare is extended to Mexico, the program would only work with health care providers approved by JCI.

Although the health sector in Mexico is regulated and certified by the Mexican General Health Commission, the task of getting JCI certification for Mexico’s private hospitals is of prime importance.

One of the main reasons for pushing for certification is that the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA obligates the Mexican medical system to be on a par with the United States and Canada, allowing for the free flow of patients from border to border and for fair trade, much like in other economic sectors.

But there is another huge reason for this interest in JCI certification and that is Medicare.

Crist revealed that ten hospitals in Mexico have JCI accreditation but another 23 are seeking approval. Among those already approved are the American British Padre Hospital and the Santa Fe Hospital in Mexico City and the Christus Muguerza Hospital and the Hospital Tec de Monterrey in Monterrey.

The approval of Medicare would greatly benefit hospitals such as Christus Muguerza, a Texas chain that now has seven hospitals under construction across Mexico. They have the advantage because their headquarters is in Texas, which gives Medicare a bit more confidence in the quality service they are going to provide.

In a recent interview with Forbes magazine, David Warner, a professor of health care policy at the University of Texas at Austin and a specialist on Medicare in Mexico, stated that an in-depth pilot project is needed to better understand the economics, determine whether Mexican heath care meets Medicare’s quality standards and determine if the payment system is sufficiently free of fraud.

According to Forbes, the U.S government is concerned that creating a Mexican medical exemption might be too complicated and costly to implement and would open the door for Americans in other countries.

Crist figures that if Medicare were accepted in Mexico, the 64 percent of American retirees currently flying back to the United States for expensive care would opt for treatment nearer their homes, cutting Medicare overall costs by a minimum of 22 percent.

Source: Guadalajara Reporter

For more information about quality health care services in Mexico and other countries at a major discounted price, log on to Healthbase and request a FREE quote for surgery.

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Federal Employees Health Benefits Program – a model for good insurance?

An excellent story appeared yesterday on NPR that talked about the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program or FEHBP – the health insurance program that insures 8 million federal workers, retirees and their families, and members of Congress. Below is the story of a 13-year old daughter of a federal employee who feels blessed to have the FEHBP coverage to pay for the costs of managing her Type 1 diabetes. Do you think other insurance programs in the country should model themselves after FEHBP?

“This is what keeps me alive,” says 13-year-old Toni Bethea, as she picks a tiny glass bottle off the kitchen counter of her home in Washington, D.C. The clear liquid inside is insulin. Toni has Type 1 diabetes.

“Your health is obviously not anything that you should play around with,” says Toni, a high-school freshman. She’s pretty, smiling and stylish — from her bangs angled across her forehead to her sparkly red fingernails.

“You should take it very seriously and when you have a chronic illness like what I have and other kids have, it’s very important that we take care of ourselves because there’s a lot of preventable stuff that can happen to us.”

It helps that her mother, Rhonda Dorsey, has good insurance, which she gets as a federal employee. She’s covered by the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, or FEHBP. It insures 8 million federal workers, retirees and their families — and members of Congress. That federal health insurance program has been held up — by the president, lawmakers and other players in the health care debate — as a model of the kind of good insurance that should be available to all Americans.

Dorsey and others who are covered under FEHBP do report high levels of satisfaction, but it’s not some kind of super insurance. It’s pretty much like most insurance people get through their jobs. Federal workers, too, sometimes complain about the rising costs of their premiums and co-payments and about the hassles of getting care.

The Option To Choose

Toni was five years old when she was first diagnosed with diabetes — as long as she can remember. “At five, I really didn’t know what was going on, but I remember having my mother and my grandfather holding me down to give me shots and prick my fingers. And I was scared, I was confused, and it wasn’t a good time.”

In those early, stressful days of her daughter’s illness, Rhonda belonged to a traditional HMO through FEHBP. She’d take Toni to see an endocrinologist, an eye doctor and one specialist after another. “I’d always have to get a referral. And sometimes I would forget and I’d get to the doctor’s office and it would be a mess. And so I’d be very apologetic and we’d have to call the pediatrician’s office, and it just was a waste of time in my opinion.”

There were limits, too, on the supplies she needed to manage Toni’s diabetes. Sometimes a prescription refill for needles or testing strips would be denied.

So Rhonda switched insurance companies. Her new plan allows her to keep taking her daughter back to the specialists who know her best. “I have the standard plan which means that I pay a little bit more up front,” she explains. “My deductible is a little bit higher, but I don’t have to deal with the referrals. I can go to any doctor.”

Federal employees get a lot of choice. That’s what makes the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program stand out compared to other insurance. In the Washington, D.C. area, there are at least 16 health plans to choose from. Across the nation, according to a new report by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust, most companies offer only one health plan to their employees, and just one percent of companies offer three or more.

The federal Office of Personnel Management conducts annual negotiations with each health plan to set benefits and rates. That has allowed it to claim some success in constraining cost growth. But last year Blue Cross and Blue Shield — which covers about 60 percent of FEHBP enrollees — increased the premium for its standard option by 13 percent. As a result, the average for all federal plans went up 7 percent. The year before, the annual premium increase was just 2.1 percent.

Toni’s Life Depends On It

For Dorsey, an information specialist at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, her insurance through FEHBP has been central to keeping Toni healthy. “In order to live a healthy life with Type 1 diabetes or any kind of chronic illness,” she says, “it’s so important to have good insurance. And I tell Toni all the time how blessed we are because we’ve met a lot of people who don’t have insurance at all.”

Still, even with good insurance, it’s expensive to manage diabetes. Toni pricks her calloused fingertips several times a day to check her blood sugar levels. Rhonda pays a little more than $200 a month for supplies.

Toni wears an insulin pump — it’s the size of a cell phone and it’s pink. “It had to be pink,” Toni says with a laugh. Adds her mother, “Pink is definitely her style.” The first pump cost $5,000. Insurance paid all but $500.

Toni knows she’s fortunate. This summer, she went to a summer camp for kids with diabetes. And she saw what kids do when they don’t have good health insurance. “At camp they provide you with supplies, but I’ve seen kids who have saved their needles and taken them with them,” she says. “Even though you weren’t like supposed to, they would kind of sneak them just to make sure they would have something when they got back home.”

Toni and Rhonda know that when people don’t have good insurance, they’re so desperate they will even reuse a needle. “It gets dull. And so it really hurts. But you have to have insulin, just like I said,” Rhonda says. “I mean, without insulin, Toni would die. So you, take the pain in order to live.”

Toni listens to her mother and adds, “I do feel very grateful for all that I have, because that could be me.”

Source: NPR, by Joseph Shapiro

For those without health insurance or poor health coverage, there is medical tourism (as well as domestic medical tourism) to help them afford the costs of major medical care. Read more about these on Healthbase.

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2009 survey shows family health premiums rose to $13,375 a year

According to the 2009 Employer Health Benefits Survey, released on 15 September 2009 by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET), premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose to $13,375 annually for family coverage this year – with employees on average paying $3,515 and employers paying $9,860.

The 2009 annual survey of employers provided a detailed look at trends in employer-sponsored health coverage, including premiums, employee contributions, cost-sharing provisions, and other relevant information.

Following are some of the findings of the survey:

• Family premiums rose about 5 percent this year. That’s much more than general inflation, which fell 0.7 percent, and workers wages that went up 3.1 percent, during the same period.
• 60 percent of firms offer health benefits to any of their workers this year. As in the past, the smaller the firm, the less likely it is to offer health benefits – with fewer than half (46 percent) of the smallest employers (three to nine workers) offering health benefits.
• Among those firms offering benefits, 21 percent reported they reduced the scope of health benefits or increased cost sharing due to the economic downturn, and 15 percent reported they increased the worker’s share of the premium.
• The survey reveals that a growing number of workers who are covered by their employer are facing high deductibles in their plans in addition to contributing to the premiums for their coverage. In 2009, 22 percent of covered workers must pay at least $1,000 out of pocket annually for single coverage before their plan generally will start to pay a share of their health care bills, up from 18 percent last year and 10 percent in 2006.
• Preferred Provider Organizations (PPO) continue to dominate the employer market, enrolling six in 10 covered workers. Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO) cover 20 percent of workers, with an additional 10 percent in Point-of-Service plans, and 8 percent in consumer-directed plans, which are high-deductible plans that also include a tax-preferred savings options such as a Health Savings Account (HSA) or Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA).
• Many businesses are struggling with ways to curb their health care costs, including offering high-deductible plans for workers, though relatively few (2 percent) expect to drop health benefits altogether.

Now in its 11th year, the survey is a joint project of the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association. The survey, conducted between January and May, included 3,188 randomly selected, non-federal public and private firms with three or more employees.

Have you considered employer-sponsored medical tourism health benefits to cut down your costs but offer top quality health care benefits to your employees? Contact Healthbase for more information.

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