July 10th, 2016
Podcast 204: Medical marijuana’s effect on Medicare prescriptions
[Note: a transcript of this interview will be added in a few days’ time.] Our guest has strong indirect evidence that medical marijuana has been replacing “standard” drugs in states where it is legal. In doing so, the substitution is saving the Medicare system modest amounts of money. Their evidence, published in Health Affairs, comes from an […]
September 27th, 2015
Podcast 185: A Spirited Discussion on Medicare’s ‘Doc Fix’ Fix for Reimbursement
A group of physicians, economists, and medical students gathered on Medstro to talk about Medicare’s solution to the decades-old “doc fix” problem — it’s how you get paid for caring for Medicare patients. The chat was occasioned by an essay in the New England Journal of Medicine by Meredith Rosenthal, an economist and a close observer […]
May 7th, 2010
Podcast 86: Prompt follow-up after discharge for heart failure reduces early-readmission rates.
Why wouldn’t you want your hospital to lower its rate of early readmissions for heart failure by 15%? We talk with Dr. Adrian Hernandez about his examination of Medicare data from over 200 hospitals, how the hospitals vary widely in the rates at which their patients are followed up within a week of discharge for […]
July 26th, 2008
Podcast 9: News and interview with Prof. Robert Hogg, British Columbia Center for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, Vancouver.
This week, Robert Hogg gives us his perspective on the increasing longevity seen with HIV infection in high-income countries. Journal Watch links Lipid Screening in Childhood – New Recommendations from the AAP Consensus Statement Issued for Managing Prediabetes Medicare to Reimburse Doctors Extra for Electronic Prescriptions