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Biomedical subjects

B S Bloom

Publications and source records attributed to B S Bloom.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources
PubMed1976

The role of the Federal government in financing health and medical services.

Public sector spending and private sector spending for health and medical services have tended to parallel one another over the past four decades. Although total expenditures have grown dramatically, the relationship between the two sectors has not. Government gradually increased its support and provision of health care between 1929 and 1940. Between 1940 and 1966 government spending for health care remained at a plateau. The federal government's major participation since 1966 has been through its role as a transfer agent for the Medicare trust fund, acting as an intermediary, rather than through the expenditure of general revenues for health and medical care services. Rising costs and increased demand for medical services will probably force a larger financial role upon government.

Financing, Government↗
PubMed1975

Preoperative laparoscopy in diagnosis of acute abdominal pain.

During 1973, 56 patients on one of three general surgical services at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, who were judged to require hospital admission for acute abdominal pain were dividied into two groups. This division was determined by whether or not the physician responsible thought a definite diagnosis could be established on clinical grounds. 27 patients were thought to have a definite diagnosis and underwent laparotomy without preoperative laparoscopy; at laparotomy, 6 of these patients (22%) had no operable lesion. An additional 29 patients had severe abdominal pain and required observation in hospital. An exact diagnosis could not be clinically established in these patients, and many would in the past have required exploratory laparotomy. These 29 patients underwent laparoscopy resulting in all but 1 (4%) having the presence or absence of intra-abdominal disease requiring operative intervention definitely established. At laparoscopy, diagnosis was made in 18 patients who did not require laparotomy while 11 had disease requiring laparotomy after laparoscopy. No complications resulted from laparoscopy. The difference in the median length of stay and hospital charges resulted in a saving of one and a half days in hospital and $87 when laparoscopy rather than explatory laparotomy determined that acute abdominal pain was caused by a condition not requiring surgical intervention.

Abdomen, Acute↗
PubMed1973

Coronary-care units.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Arrhythmias, Cardiac↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Continuation of initial antihypertensive medication after 1 year of therapy.

This paper describes use of the prescription records of a large pharmaceutical benefits management organization to retrospectively analyze the refill behavior of patients who have recently started antihypertensive therapy in the outpatient setting. Using logistic regression analysis, the author identified class of antihypertensive medication, patient age, and dosing frequency as clinically important independent covariates that are predictive of persistence (defined as continuing therapy with the original antihypertensive drug as originally prescribed) at 12 months. At 12 months' follow-up, the percentage of patients continuing initial angiotensin II (A-II) antagonist therapy was substantially higher than the percentage continuing therapy with angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, calcium antagonists, beta-blockers, or thiazide diuretics (64% vs 58%, 50%, 43%, and 38%, respectively). Additional studies are needed to explain why more patients continued with the same A-II antagonist therapy at 12 months compared with the other classes of antihypertensive drugs; whether these findings are explained by drug tolerability, financial incentives, newness of the product, selection bias, or other factors; whether these differences will be maintained in the following years; and whether the differences are associated with better health outcomes.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Prospective payment and the Medicare hospice benefit.

The objective of this study was to determine the effects of very high cost patients on hospice financial status. Ten Pennsylvania hospices dually certified by Medicare were randomly selected and agreed to participate. Patient age, sex, diagnosis, length of stay and payer were fairly uniform across hospices. Payments varied by diagnosis and payer. High cost patients were irregularly found in hospices; low cost patients were commonly and regularly distributed. Every hospice had at least one high cost patient. In one, the uncompensated payment for the 6.6 percent of patients defined as high cost ($7,300 and above) would have been 14.7 percent of total annual revenues. In another, uncompensated payments for high cost patients (9.8 percent) would have accounted for 17.2 percent of revenue. In 96.3 percent of the instances patients utilized less than the Medicare Hospice Benefit maximum allowable cost ($7,300); and, 98.8 percent of the time patients stayed less than the maximum allowable length of time of 210 days. A logistic regression model found long length of stay (p < 0.0001), Medicare hospice benefit as primary payer (p < 0.0001), any hospitalization during hospice stay (p < 0.003) and cerebrovascular disease diagnosis (p < 0.02) to be significantly related to high cost. Between the time the study was planned and completed, Medicare instituted a reinsurance program allowing unused funds below the maximum allowable limit from one patient to be used for patients who exhausted their benefits. Thus, no study hospice was adversely affected by high cost patients. However, it should serve as an object lesson to Medicare in using prospective payment.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Aged↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Why such a hurry?

Over the past decade or so, federal health policy has chased health care costs that grew out of control largely because of federal intervention in the form of the Medicare/Medicaid programs. Having implemented a prospective pricing system for institutional providers, the government has followed up with a resource-based relative value system for physicians. The prognosis for this new effort may be no better than that for past attacks on health care costs, and the outcome could be substantially worse.

Canada↗