Amid the experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an opportunity for boards of nonprofit hospitals to rethink how their CEOs are paid, particularly compared to the staff at their facilities, representatives with the Lown Institute wrote in a Feb. 10 article published in Health Affairs.
The Lown Institute, a nonpartisan healthcare think tank, examined the gap between the pay of hospital staff and the CEO, as well as the implications of it.
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What are we rewarding hospital CEOs for -- and what metrics could drive their salaries on instead? In an recent piece in Health Affairs Forefront, Vikas Saini, Judith Garber, and Shannon Brownlee from the Lown Institute share findings from the Lown Hospitals Index on pay equity at nonprofit hospitals.
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Deaths in high-income countries have largely become "medicalized," moving more and more into the purview of the health care system. What are the implications of this change for families and for health systems around the world? The Lancet Commission on the Value of Death recently released a report addressing the medicalization of death and why it matters.
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A group of advocates has been sounding the alarm about the risk of side effects from benzodiazepines, even when taken as directed. An upcoming documentary tells their stories.
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Every day, 750 adults age 65 or older are hospitalized for serious side effects from a medication, according to the Lown Institute. One Lown Institute study found that you are 88 percent more likely to seek care for a drug complication or side effect if you take five or more medications. Other research shows that your fall risk increases 7 percent for each medication you take.
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Will devices like the Apple Watch that continuously monitor heart rhythm reduce rates of stroke? The evidence still isn't there, the USPSTF finds.
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To reduce harmful overmedication, we need to give doctors and patients opportunities to deprescribe. One pharmacy benefit manager has already started providing prescription checkups for their members -- here's how their program is working so far.
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After CMS restricted access to Aduhelm, Biogen and the Alzheimer's Association called the decision discriminatory. Here's why we're skeptical...
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The Medsafer study shows how clinical decision tools can help doctors deprescribe more in the hospital.
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MGB's continuing expansion raises questions about the underlying values of nonprofit hospitals. If you’re a hospital with tax-exempt status, “you could be asking, ‘what are you doing locally for the community?‘ ” Saini told me. “Or, you can figure out where there are paying customers and build a clinic.”
On one hand, MGB simply embodies the market-driven spirit of American health care: “They have to find revenue, and the revenue is fragmented in terms of geography and social class,” said Saini.
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New research from Johns Hopkins evaluates overuse at more than 600 health systems. How do their results compare to those of the Lown Hospitals Index?
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Enjoy these Shkreli Award "dishonorable mentions" — nominees that didn't quite make the top ten, but are worth calling out nonetheless.
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A top ten list of the worst examples of profiteering and dysfunction in health care, named for Martin Shkreli, the price-hiking "pharma bro" that everyone loves to hate.
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Brigham is among the worst of more than 3,000 US hospitals in providing community benefits like health education and clinics, according to the Lown Institute, a Needham-based health care think tank.
Nonprofit hospitals like the Brigham, with tax-exempt status, should not be trying to “suck up wealth in other countries to subsidize unaffordable health care here,” said Dr. Vikas Saini, Lown’s president.
Brigham’s Evergrande project, he said, “would probably be the most egregious example of what we have been talking about.”
“This is catering to elites, and the elites didn’t show up,” he said.
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A group of Alzheimer’s experts and health advocates called on the Food and Drug Administration to pull Aduhelm off the market and said they were supporting an effort to file a formal petition with the agency to withdraw it.
“The F.D.A.’s decision to approve Aduhelm is indefensible in both scientific and clinical terms,” said a statement signed by 18 scientists, most of them doctors. “This drug should be withdrawn from the market immediately.”
The doctors and scientists who signed the statement also agreed to provide their expertise to support the filing of a citizen petition, a formal process to seek reversal of the F.D.A.’s decision. The petition will be filed by the Right Care Alliance, a coalition of clinicians, patients and community members, which is also circulating a pledge for physicians who promise not to prescribe Aduhelm and for patients and family members who say they will not request it.
Dr. Vikas Saini, chairman of the Right Care Alliance and president of the Lown Institute, a health care think tank, said that while the citizen petition process can take months or years, it can prompt F.D.A. action.
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A recently-released Congressional committee report on drug prices reveals some outrageous business practices by pharma -- here's what they found.
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The 2021 hospital price transparency rule may not end the price confusion for patients, but it's still a valuable change-- here's why...
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On December 9, 1985, Dr. Bernard Lown and Dr. Yevgeni Chazov were about to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, for their work uniting doctors against nuclear war. Lown and Chazov had no idea they would be saving a life that day.
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Being able to do an experiment over again and confirm the results is actually a crucial aspect of science, called reproducibility. Unfortunately, a shockingly large proportion of cancer biology studies we do may not be reproducible, a new study shows.
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The White House recently announced their first Maternal Health Day of Action. We take a look at what's in the plan, what's promising, and what's missing...
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