By MICHAEL MILLENSOM This article is adapted from a talk given Sept. 7 at the 11th Annual World Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit in Irvine, California, sponsored by the Patient Safety Movement Foundation. World Patient Safety Day is Sept. 17, with a series of events in Washington, D.C. from Sept. 15-17 sponsored by Patients…
PITTSBURGH — A false alarm that a gunman was roaming one Catholic high school and then another in March 2023 touched off frightening evacuations and a robust police response in the city. It also prompted the diocese to rethink what constitutes a model learning environment. Months after hundreds of students were met by SWAT teams,…
LOS ANGELES — For nearly a decade, John Baackes has led L.A. Care Health Plan, a publicly run insurer primarily serving low-income Los Angeles County residents on Medi-Cal. It is by far the largest Medi-Cal plan in the state. Baackes, 78, who will retire after the end of the year, helped transform L.A. Care into…
Conventional wisdom holds that it takes 17 years from medical innovation to adoption in the real-world. However, with advances in information technology, perhaps adoption timelines have shortened. A paper by DiCicca et al. (2024) examines how new clinical trial evidence on breech births impact practice patterns. Specifically, they note that: Using the United States Birth…
The proportion of Americans without health insurance remained stable in 2023, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, close to the record low the Biden administration achieved in 2022 through expansions of public programs, including the Affordable Care Act. About 8% of Americans were uninsured, a statistically insignificant increase of just 0.1 percentage point from a year…
Former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are both eager to take on high drug prices, leaving pharmaceutical companies on the defensive as they spend millions of dollars this election season. When Harris was California’s attorney general, she joined cases that resulted in almost $7.2 billion (about $22 per person in the United…
Suspicions that U.S. consumers’ personal information could be accessed from India led regulators to abruptly bar two large private sector enrollment websites from accessing the Affordable Care Act marketplace in August. New details about the suspensions come in legal filings made late Friday stemming from an effort by the two to regain access to the…
SIKESTON, Mo. — In 1942, Mable Cook was a teenager. She was standing on her front porch when she witnessed the lynching of Cleo Wright. In the aftermath, Cook received advice from her father that was intended to keep her safe. “He didn’t want us talking about it,” Cook said. “He told us to forget…
Who was Harold Hotelling and what did he contribute to the field of economics? A paper by Gaspard et al. (2024) in the Journal of Economics Literature provides some background on his life, his research and pros and cons of his research contributions. Today I summarize some of his key contributions to the field of…
The Host Julie Rovner KFF Health News @jrovner Read Julie’s stories. Julie Rovner is chief Washington correspondent and host of KFF Health News’ weekly health policy news podcast, “What the Health?” A noted expert on health policy issues, Julie is the author of the critically praised reference book “Health Care Politics and Policy A to…