'Best Hospitals' Ranking Lacks Adequate National Data
Marketers should read beyond "America's Best Hospitals" ranking by U.S. News & World Report, according to a recent issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). After evaluating "America's Best Hospitals," the longest runnig report card on hospital quality, Jesse Green, Ph.D, and colleagues from New York University Medical Center, found the listing provided limited insight into quality.
The ranking, which began in 1990, uses methodology developed by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, uses methodology that focuses on three classic components of hospital quality: structure, process and outcomes. The authors say limited data hampers the accuracy of the rankings. (AMA, 312/464-4431)
Risky Behavior Costs Country Billions of Dollars
Risky behavior has cost the country a hefty $188 billion, according to government statistics contained in the just-released 1996 Source Book of Health Insurance Data.
This recently released annual fact book compiled by the Washington, D.C.-based Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA) found that risky behaviors like drug and alcohol abuse, smoking, failure to use seatbelts, unsafe sex and sharing contaminated needles attributed to nearly one-quarter of the counrty's health expenditures in 1995 (the most recent figures available).
Additionally, about one-third of the patients occupying hospital beds are under treatment for ailments resulting from alcoholism, according to the Source Book.
Other key statistics:
- Out of 228 million non-elderly Americans, 61 percent had employer-sponsored insurance, 12 percent had Medicaid, 7 percent had other private insurance, 2 percent had Medicare, 3 percent had veterans' insurance, and 16 percent were uninsured.
- Connecticut had the highest cost per Medicaid recipient ($5,588) while Arizona had the lowest cost per recipient ($442).
- Oregon had the highest percentage (42 perent) of people enrolled in Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), while North Dakota had the lowest (1.2 percent).
(HIAA, 202/824-1786)
America's Middle-Income Families Hardest Hit By Healthcare Costs
Over the next five years, U.S. healthcare costs will rise two-to two-and-a-half times as fast as inflation, with middle-income families paying disproportionately more, according to a new National Coalition on Health Care (NCNC) study.
The study, conducted by Kenneth E. Thorpe, director, Tulane University's Medical Center Institute for Health Services Research, dramatically illustrates the impact of healthcare costs on inflation across a wide range of purchasers. But while increases will affect all income sectors, middle-income households (between $20,000 and $60,000) will lose the highest percentage of their income. Had healthcare costs remained constant during the '90s, middle-income households would, today, have a spending surplus of between $500 and $1,000.
"The data confirms the trend we have anticipated, that healthcare cost pressures have resumed and will continue to build," said Dr. Henry E. Simmons, NCHC president. Across the board, the study projects that the typical family will directly spend $2,000 on healthcare in 1997.
Imbedded in those premiums are the cost of care for the 42 million uninsured Americans which create a regressive income tax burden.
Nationally, the study projects that healthcare expenditures will increase 50 percent to $1.5 trillion by 2002. (NCHC, 202/637-6830)
Calcium-Rich Diets Found to Reduce Kidney Stones in Men
Men who eat a calcium-enriched diet can reduce their risk of kidney stones by 34 percent, according to a Health Professionals Follow-up study directed by the Harvard School of Public Health. Comparatively, men who consume a diet low in calcium form kidney stones two to three times that of women.
This finding dramatically contrasts traditional physician advice on how stones form. Because stones, in a majority of cases, have been found to have a high content of calcium, doctors have recommended reducing calcium intake to prevent stone recurrence.
However, the current study finds that restricting dietary calcium does not decrease risk and may in fact increase it. For men in the study, the equivalent of two glasses of milk each day was shown to decrease the potential of stone formation.
The study, which tracked 50,000 male health professionals nationwide, aged 40 to 75 from 1986-1990, found that 505 men developed their first kidney stone.
Kidney stones are expected to affect more than 12 percent of the U.S. population at some time in their lives. (Harvard School of Public Health, 617/432-1480)