An affiliate of New York-based Veritas Capital on Wednesday announced the $1.25 billion acquisition of Thomson Reuters Healthcare, which includes an Ann Arbor facility that employs about 800.

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TORONTO - The more Canadians settle into a life of physical inactivity, the more they exact a toll on the country's health care system, a new study from Queen's University suggested.

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Physical inactivity costs health care system more than $6.8 billion: Study

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Updated: Wed Jun. 06 2012 21:26:40

The Canadian Press

TORONTO The more Canadians settle into a life of physical inactivity, the more they exact a toll on the country's health care system, a new study from Queen's University suggested.

The report, published Wednesday in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, estimated the total cost of a life of lassitude had reached approximately $6.8 billion in 2009, or 3.7 per cent of all health care costs.

Study author Ian Janssen mined a variety of data sources to arrive at the figures, which account for both the direct and indirect cost of physical inactivity.

Janssen said his estimates of physical activity levels throughout the country were based on Statistics Canada's Health Measure Survey, which tracked the movements of some 5,000 participants using an accelerometer.

This data was combined with scientific literature on the risks physically inactive people run of contracting seven common chronic diseases, as well as figures from Health Canada estimating the cost of treating those conditions.

Running those results through a series of mathematical models, Janssen said the direct cost of treating conditions associated with a sedentary lifestyle amounted to more than $2.4 billion. The indirect costs -- which he described as the loss of personal and financial productivity due to poor health -- added up to slightly above $4.3 billion, he said.

"It's important for people to understand that this is a very costly behaviour," Janssen said in a telephone interview from Kingston, Ont.

"We often think of medical care as the diseases themselves. We don't realize that those diseases are caused, in large measure, by our lifestyle behaviours and choices."

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Physical inactivity costs health care system billions: study

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BOSTON The state House of Representatives has passed a proposal that aims to reel in the state's spiraling health care costs by $160 billion over the next 15 years. The House and Senate must now resolve their differences over the measure before it can go to Gov. Deval Patrick.

Lawmakers have been working on legislation that tries to lower the costs resulting from the 2006 landmark Massachusetts health care legislation that mandates health insurance for nearly all state residents. The House passed its version of the bill 148-7 late Tuesday night.

This bill aims to contain health care costs by evening out disparities in the prices of health services. It would require hospitals that charge more than 20 percent above the state median price for a service to pay a 10 percent surcharge.

It also focuses on workforce development, overhauls medical malpractice laws and adopts alternative payment methods, such as global and bundled payments for services.

A conference committee will now reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill, which differ on certain provisions like the surcharge on hospitals and other health care providers. The Senate bill does not call for any surcharge.

Patrick, a Democrat, told reporters Wednesday that he is looking forward to the work of the committee.

"I'm confident we are going to get to a great and final bill," he said. "It will be a good bill for patients and for the industry as well."

During debate on the bill, Rep. Steven Walsh, D-Lynn, who spearheaded the effort, said health care costs in Massachusetts have been rising from 6.7 percent to 8 percent annually, with the state spending $66 billion on health care last year

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House lawmakers pass health care cost bill Lynn's Walsh shepherded through

A decreasing number of new dentists graduating and entering the field is adversely affecting the health-care consumer.

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Dental health takes back seat in health-care debate

Public release date: 6-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Rick Adams clarence.r.adams@hitchcock.org 603-653-1913 Massachusetts General Hospital

No one questions whether or not health care costs have risen, and risen dramatically, in recent decades. But beyond questions of cost alone is a bigger question: how has the value of health care changed or, in other words, is the health care system getting what it pays for in terms of improved patient health?

Any answer to such a question must be complex, but one group of health care specialists has used a unique historical resource records from the 200-year-old history of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) to examine trends in the value of health care since the early 19th century. Their analysis, published in the June 7 New England Journal of Medicine, reveals that increases in health expenditures, slow during the hospital's first hundred years and steadily increasing throughout the 20th century, were accompanied by significant reductions in mortality rates during those years. Since 2001, however, costs have continued to escalate while mortality rates have not changed.

"This review of 200 years is the longest population health run ever looked at," said Gregg Meyer, MD, corresponding author of the study. "The difficult question it raises is: are the modest improvements we're seeing in mortality over the past 10 years worth the current trajectory of costs? We need to focus on a health care system that's sustainable. We don't have that system now, but we need to work toward it urgently." Formerly senior vice president for Quality and Safety at MGH, Meyer is now chief clinical officer and executive vice president for Population Health at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health System.

Drawing on records kept by the MGH of the condition of each patient leaving the hospital classified according to whether they had died or whether or not their condition had improved the paper's authors prepared a chart reflecting inpatient mortality rates for each year since patients were first admitted to the MGH in 1821. The hospital also calculated the annual costs per patient discharged alive, which the authors of the current report adjusted to reflect 2010 dollars. The results reflect what the authors term "four distinct eras" of health care value.

In the first period, from 1821 to 1910, costs stayed fairly level at an average of close to $1,000 per patient discharged alive. Mortality fluctuated greatly often reflecting events such as epidemics and the introduction of advances such as surgical anesthetics around an average of 8.7 percent. In the second period 1911 to 1960 costs began to rise and mortality to drop relatively slowly, with fluctuations representing the 1918 influenza epidemic and the growing numbers of patients who were cared for in hospitals rather than at home during their final days.

The years from 1961 through 2000 were characterized by more rapid rates of change, with both rising costs and declining mortality attributable to factors such as the availability of private health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and the development of new, often costly medical technologies. Throughout the 20th century, increased costs closely tracked reductions in mortality. During the first part of the century, each $1,000 cost increase was associated with a decrease of 2 deaths per 1,000 patients, and after 1960 the same cost increase led to a reduction of 2.4 deaths per 1,000 patients.

Since 2001, however, an even more rapid increase in costs has been accompanied by little change in mortality rates, leading the authors to write that the period "seems to be characterized by diminishing returns, with growth in costs far outpacing reductions in inpatient mortality." They also note that, while the MGH's costs are higher than the average U.S. hospital's because of its medical education and research activities, the trends outlined by their analysis of MGH records parallel those seen at other hospitals.

"We do think it mirrors the results you would find in academic medical centers specifically and really, health care in general, if you looked at that same long time period. The factors that impact mortality and costs such as wars, epidemics, introduction of new drugs and technologies were experienced by the entire health care system." Meyer said.

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Analysis tracks how health care value has changed over 200 years

Why is your health insurance so expensive?

In some cases, it's because your insurer was simply allowed to increase premiums unchecked.

But not anymore. Under health care reform's "rate review" provision, all proposed rate increases of 10 percent or more must be gone over by independent experts. If the planned price hikes don't stand up to scrutiny, states can negotiate them down or, where authorized, deny them outright. The law also makes it easy for you to track how your health insurer's rate proposals have stood up to the test.

Since the crackdown on rising premiums began last September, Connecticut reduced a proposed Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield increase from 12.9 percent to 3.9 percent, New Mexico trimmed a Presbyterian Healthcare rate hike from 9.7 percent to 4.7 percent, and New York held three companies' average proposed increases of 12.7 percent to 8.2 percent.

Cutting down price hikes that are deemed unreasonable is just one facet of the federal rate review initiative. Under the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, health insurance companies in every state now must publicly justify any proposed rate increase at or above the 10 percent threshold, in postings on the federal Healthcare.gov rate review website. Think of it as a report card for your health insurance company.

You can log on to the site and search by state or health insurer to see if and why your premiums may be jumping at least 10 percent, and read the findings by state or federal examiners on whether a requested increase passed muster. To date, more than 185 rate increases affecting 1.3 million policyholders have been posted to the site.

Later this year, the "medical loss ratios" of health insurers also will be posted, giving you a closer look at whether your insurer is meeting the health care law's requirement that at least 80 percent of your premium be spent directly on medical care. If that's not the case, the insurance company will now owe you a rebate for the difference.

"The whole point of the Affordable Care Act is to create this very open, transparent marketplace so that consumer choice can guide toward better outcomes," says Brian Chiglinsky, spokesman for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. "We're trying to prompt consumers to say, 'Should I be buying this policy?'"

Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, who chairs the Health Insurance and Managed Care Committee of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, says health care reform's rate review program will help states stand up to insurance companies.

"Some states have had what's called 'prior approval authority' to review and modify health insurance rate increases for years, some have prior authority over the individual market but not the small group market, and some have no rate review at all," she says.

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No gouging! Reform curbs health care hikes

Lockport Union-Sun & Journal Briody Health Care Facility is the first long-term care facility to join the Western New York HEALTHeLINK electronic clinical information exchange.

The exchange allows health care providers to access consenting patients medical records, to gain important information such as blood type, vaccination history, allergy history and current prescription medical regimens.

The exchange is a way for different specialists primary care doctor, cardiologist, allergist, oncologist to know a patients full medical history in the event the patient is unable to convey or doesnt remember all of the details, according to the HealthELink website. Patients must actively consent to their information being viewed by participating providers.

Briody Health Care Facility has begun submitting residents admission, discharge and transfer notices electronically through HealthELink, a spokesman announced this week.

We are very happy to collaborate with HealthELink to add another aspect of technology at our health facility which will help improve patient outcomes, Briody Administrator Ann Briody Petock said. Our facility initiated the use of an electronic medical record three years ago, and we have seen the benefits that technology can provide to increase communication, quality of care and to prepare us for the digital future of health care.

Throughout the eight-county Western New York region, more than 390,000 residents are signed up to have their health records viewed in HealthELink. Nearly 2,400 individual health-care providers are participating.In addition to Briody, they come fromthree independent laboratory practices, five independent radiology practices, three home care agencies and area hospitals accounting for 90 percent of the beds in the region, according to executive director Daniel Porreca.

Briodys addition is a milestone for the system, he said.

Transition of care, whether from the hospital to a long-term care facility, or from long-term to home care, can be vulnerable times for patients ... as their health information and current medications may be in flux, Porreca said. Having long-term care facilities as data sources for HealthELink will allow for better coordination between treating physicians. Those physicians will also have immediate access to their patients health information to provide better and more efficient care during these transitions.

For more information about the system, visit http://www.wnyhealthelink.com.

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Briody joins new record exchange