Saturday, May 31, 2008

Med mal premiums in Mass., 1975-2005

Marc Rodwin, one of the most innovative and consistently interesting health law scholars around, has published (with others) in the May/June issue of Health Affairs a very useful study of med mal premiums in Massachusetts (described as "a high-risk state") over the 30-year period of 1975-2005. Here's the abstract:Massachusetts has the fourth-highest median malpractice settlement payments for all

American College of Physicians: E-Health Recommendations

The ACP's new report, E-Health and Its Impact on Medical Practice, is presented on their news page. The challenge of moving physicians to electronic health records is daunting. This is from the press release:Health care may be the fastest growing industry, but it has been slow to adopt the use of technology. While orders at fast food chains are now entirely automated, most physician offices and

Two Versions of End-of-Life Care

The New York Times had an interesting article Friday (In New York City, Two Versions of End-of-Life Care) on variations in end-of-life care -- not the usual comparison of EOL expenditures between geographically disparate locations, but this time between well-off private hospitals and public facilities a couple of miles apart within the same city. The data come from the Dartmouth Atlas of Health