The Cleveland Clinic, the second-best hospital in the nation as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, ranks so poorly in equity metrics that it failed to crack the United States' top 500 hospitals when "social responsibility" was taken into account. More
The second annual most socially responsible hospitals rankings are out from the Lown Institute. More
Two Baltimore hospitals — Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and the University of Maryland Medical Center Midtown Campus — have been ranked among the top 10 most “socially responsible” health centers in the U.S. by health care think tank and consulting organization.
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"We think that hospitals represent really kind of probably the central part, certainly the most visible and the most active part, of all of American healthcare," Lown Institute President Vikas Saini said. "And to get a better healthcare system, hospitals absolutely have to be part of the solution." Saini noted that the individual hospitals on the honor roll were not particularly well-known names. "That was the goal of our whole exercise was to really begin to shine a spotlight on hospitals that might be doing things in a way that hadn't yet been really discovered or recognized," he said. More
Relatively few top healthcare organizations rank high for health equity and social responsibility, a jarring finding considering medicine’s statements committing to health equity over the past year, the Lown Institute reported in a press release sent to journalists. More
The Lown Institute, a nonpartisan healthcare think tank, unveiled the social responsibility ranking Sept. 21. The social responsibility list ranks 3,010 hospitals and is based on 54 metrics across three main categories: equity, value and outcomes. More
The full results of the Lown Hospitals Index reveals which hospitals achieve on equity, outcomes, and value... and which hospitals fall short. More
When the FDA approved new Alzheimer's drug Aduhelm based on little clinical evidence, experts protested. Yet the Aduhelm controversy is just the latest in a pattern of regulators approving new drugs based on surrogate endpoints rather than clinical outcomes that matter to patients. In The BMJ, Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee argue that surrogate endpoints provide no guarantee of clinical benefit and should be used only as a last resort in drug trials. More
How the Food and Drug Administration messes up approval of new drugs including the new one, aducanumab, that supposedly helps Alzheimer’s disease patients. More
When researchers, media, and advocates teamed up to bring attention to hospital lawsuits, it led to a dramatic decrease in lawsuits filed. What can we learn from this initiative? More
“This drug needs to be pulled off the market — period," said Adam Uratro, the chief of maternal-fetal medicine at MetroWest Medical Center. More
As a matter of simple economics, hospital price transparency will improve competition and encourage more equitable pricing. More
og:description Medical journals are relied on as trusted sources of medical information. For years, authors’ conflicts of interest—both disclosed and undisclosed— have repeatedly undermined the credibility of the medical profession and the medical literature. More
Health care groups don't want transparency that reveals true prices. More
What do hospitals that advertise their services have in common? Lown Intern Neil Trivedi explains in a guest blog post. More
Congress tapped a national academies committee to examine a drug cost issue. It got a report that includes “egregious” failures to disclose conflicts of interest. More
Although we examined only one common shoppable service in this post, the importance of identifying high-price hospitals is generalizable to a broad range of hospital services. More
Medicare Advantage is fundamentally altering Medicare's structure. More
Aggressive sales tactics have allegedly led surgeons to use defective or wrong-size implants, screws or other products on patients, including former Olympian Mary Lou Retton. More
Inspectors repeatedly found manufacturing and device quality problems with the HeartWare heart pump. But the FDA did not penalize the company, and patients had the device implanted on their hearts without knowing the facts. More