Mistaken identity leads to big hospital bill mix-up : Shots

December 22, 2022 Vera

In 2013, Grace E. Elliott spent a night in a hospital in Florida for a kidney infection that was treated with antibiotics. Eight years later, she got a large bill from the health system that bought the hospital. This bill was for an unrelated surgical procedure she didn’t need and never received. It was a case of mistaken identity, she knew, but proving that wasn’t easy.

Shelby Knowles for KHN

hide caption

toggle caption

Shelby Knowles for KHN

Earlier this year, Grace Elizabeth Elliott got a mysterious hospital bill for medical care she had never received.

She soon discovered how far a clerical error can reach — even across a continent — and how frustrating it can be to fix.

During a college break in 2013, Elliott, then 22, began to feel faint and feverish while visiting her parents in Venice, Fla., which is about an hour south of Tampa. Her mother, a nurse, drove her to a facility that locals knew simply as Venice Hospital.

In the emergency department, Elliott was diagnosed with a kidney infection and held overnight before being discharged with a prescription for antibiotics, a common treatment for the illness.

“My hospital bill was about $100, which I remember because that was a lot of money for me as an undergrad,” said Elliott, now 31.

She recovered and eventually moved to California to teach preschool. Venice Regional Medical Center was bought by Community Health Systems, based in Franklin, Tenn., in 2014 and eventually renamed ShorePoint Health Venice.

The kidney infection and overnight stay in the E.R. would have been little more than a memory for Elliott.

Then another bill came.

The Patients: Grace E. Elliott, 31, a preschool teacher living with her husband in San Francisco, and Grace A. Elliott, 81, a retiree in Venice, Fla.

Medical Services: For Grace E., an emergency department visit and overnight stay, plus antibiotics to treat a kidney infection in 2013. For Grace A., a shoulder replacement and rehabilitation services

The “Big Health and fitness Event” to offer totally free health and fitness screenings, physical fitness strategies and more

September 13, 2022 Vera

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – Health and fitness disparities have long existed, and the COVID-19 pandemic spotlighted the trouble. An approaching occasion will emphasis on the problem.

The City League of Louisiana and Ochsner Health and fitness have teamed up to host what is becoming known as, “The Huge Health Celebration.” It will choose place at the Ernest N. Morial Conference Center in New Orleans on September 17 from 10 am to 4 pm.

Dr. Yvens Laborde is the Medical Director of Worldwide Wellbeing Education and Public Health at Ochsner.

“We want to improve the paradigm,” explained Laborde. “Obviously, as a result of COVID, it grew to become incredibly clear how fantastic the disparity was, in conditions of the adverse outcomes of health and fitness outcomes on the African American populace exclusively.”

Tyronne Walker is Vice President of the Urban League of Louisiana.

“Health disparities suggest African Us residents are attracting sicknesses and dying more quickly than whites in our condition and the very good information even though is, we can do a little something about and which is what the large wellness party is all about,” he mentioned.

“Ochsner Health and fitness desires to choose that on straight and a single of the means that we have to have to do that is to admit it and comprehend the barriers that essentially create people disparities because they never transpire out of a vacuum, they’re extensive, historical foundation and procedures why factors acquired the way they are, they never come about by accident,” reported Laborde.

Accessibility to wellbeing care is found as a barrier for some in black and brown communities.

“One of the structural barriers that African Individuals have and other underserved and less than-resourced communities have are limitations to obtain to care and also the difficulty of equity,” stated Laborde.

At the event, some significant health-related checks will be accessible.

“In phrases of the screenings, it’s heading to be no cost, so we’re heading to be prioritizing significant blood pressure, diabetic issues, cholesterol, we’re heading to be prioritizing lung, we’re heading to be offering breast cancer screenings, prostate most cancers screenings,” explained Laborde.

He claims Louisiana ranks low on wellbeing-connected metrics.

“We as a state, we rank 50th out of 50 states, in accordance to America’s Overall health Rankings which is an once-a-year examination which is performed, of the nation’s overall health status, and so we rank 50. That

Which Firms Are not Exiting Russia? Big Pharma

March 17, 2022 Vera

[UPDATED at 11:30 a.m. ET]

Even as the war in Ukraine has prompted an exodus of intercontinental organizations — from quickly-foodstuff chains and oil producers to luxurious vendors — from Russia, U.S. and international drug providers claimed they would continue producing and marketing their items there.

Airways, automakers, banking institutions, and technological innovation giants — at least 320 companies by just one count — are among the the companies curtailing functions or building significant-profile exits from Russia as its invasion of Ukraine intensifies. McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola introduced a pause in profits this week.

But drugmakers, health care machine makers, and wellness care firms, which are exempted from U.S. and European sanctions, said Russians require entry to medications and professional medical machines and contend that intercontinental humanitarian regulation needs they continue to keep provide chains open.

“As a wellbeing care business, we have an crucial intent, which is why at this time we continue on to serve people today in all countries in which we function who rely on us for essential products and solutions, some life-sustaining,” said Scott Stoffel, divisional vice president for Illinois-dependent Abbott Laboratories, which manufactures and sells medicines in Russia for oncology, women’s health, pancreatic insufficiency, and liver overall health.

Johnson & Johnson — which has corporate offices in Moscow, Novosibirsk, St. Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg — said in a statement, “We continue being fully commited to furnishing necessary overall health products and solutions to those in require in Ukraine, Russia, and the region, in compliance with present sanctions and though adapting to the fast transforming scenario on the floor.”

The reluctance of drugmakers to pause operations in Russia is currently being met with a rising refrain of criticism.

Pharmaceutical firms that say they have to continue to manufacture drugs in Russia for humanitarian good reasons are “being misguided at finest, cynical in the medium situation, and outright deplorably misleading and deceptive,” stated Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale University of Management who is tracking which organizations have curtailed operations in Russia. He noted that banking companies and technological know-how companies also present critical companies.

“Russians are set in a tragic placement of unearned struggling. If we proceed to make everyday living palatable for them, then we are continuing to assist the routine,” Sonnenfeld reported. “These drug firms will be viewed as complicit with the most vicious procedure on the planet. Alternatively of defending daily

Leaked Scripps information expose big mark-ups for healthcare facility care

December 26, 2021 Vera

Preposterous, seemingly arbitrary cost markups are a defining attribute of the $4-trillion U.S. healthcare process — and a critical cause People pay back extra for treatment than anybody else in the entire world.

But to see price tag hikes of as considerably as 675% getting imposed in actual time, immediately, by a hospital’s laptop or computer process even now requires your breath away.

I got to see this for myself following a previous running-home nurse at Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas shared with me screenshots of the facility’s electronic overall health report procedure.

The nurse asked that I not use her name mainly because she’s now doing the job at a different Southern California health-related facility and anxieties that her job could be endangered.

Her screenshots, taken before this calendar year, communicate for by themselves.

What they show are rate hikes ranging from 575% to 675% staying mechanically created by the hospital’s software package.

The eye-popping raises are so regimen, evidently, the software even displays the formula it works by using to transform acceptable medical charges to billed amounts that are considerably, a lot greater.

For example, a single screenshot is for sutures — that is, medical thread, a.k.a. stitches. Scripps’ program set the essential “cost per unit” at $19.30.

But the system said the “computed demand for every unit” was $149.58. This is how considerably the individual and his or her insurer would be billed.

The method helpfully bundled a formulation for reaching this quantity: “$149.58 = $19.30 + ($19.30 x 675%).”

You read through that correct. Scripps’ automatic process took the precise value of sutures, imposed an seemingly preset 675% markup and generated a billed quantity that was orders of magnitude better than the genuine price tag.

This is different from any more expenses for the health care provider, anesthesiologist, X-rays or medical center amenities.

Connect with it institutionalized price tag gouging. And it is apparently common for the reason that the exact same or equivalent software program is applied by other hospitals nationwide, which include UCLA, and all-around the environment.

The former Scripps nurse reported she resolved to snap photographs of the technique as she viewed stratospheric price hikes becoming imposed whilst a client was however on the functioning table.

She stated one particular of her careers in the operating place was to hold a functioning tally of all materials used for the duration of a method.

‘Big & Bold’ demonstrates that while fitness is for all, it’s not one-size-fits-all

October 20, 2021 Vera

On Nutrition

Let’s face it: Most people exercise with the hope it will help them lose weight, prevent weight gain or otherwise control the size and shape of their body. Sure, being healthy and feeling fit may also be goals, but the main motivator is often weight.

I once had a client tell me she took an intense fitness boot camp class for six weeks and didn’t lose any weight, so she didn’t see any point in exercising. Another client told me that once she learned that science says exercise does little for weight loss (which is true), she decided there was no reason to try to fit walking into her busy schedule.

That’s unfortunate, because there are so many reasons to move our bodies that have nothing to do with weight loss. For example, a study published last month concluded that physical activity promotes health more effectively than weight loss — with the added benefit of reducing the health risks associated with yo-yo dieting.

The persistent coupling of exercise to the idea of weight loss has also created a narrow view of what exercising bodies look like. If you’re not in a thin body, but you only see thin bodies in fitness books and magazines, in ads for gyms and yoga studios, and embodied in personal trainers and class instructors, what does this suggest? It suggests that exercise will make you thin, too — which can kill motivation when it doesn’t — or that your body has no business being in the gym or yoga studio.

One woman working to offer a more inclusive view of fitness is certified personal trainer Morit Summers, co-owner of Form Fitness, a gym in Brooklyn, New York, and author of the new book, “Big & Bold: Strength Training for the Plus-Size Woman.” The book is both serious and supportive, with clear, detailed instructions on how to perform movements safely and effectively, plus advice for how to lift in a way that fits your life and helps you reach your strength goals. While the book provides beginner-through-advanced starter workouts, Summers encourages listening to your body and modifying movements as needed. For such a meticulous and thoughtful book, its origins were … unplanned.

“I was asked if I wanted to write the book by the publishing company [Human Kinetics]. I was like, ‘Whoa, what?’ Because that was never something on my bucket