health care costs

Listen: Mayo Clinic Radio 7/8/17 On the Mayo Clinic Radio podcast, Dr. Nipunie Rajapakse, an infectious disease specialist at Mayo Clinic, discusses antibiotic resistance and antibiotic allergies. Also [...]

Antibiotics have been used for more than 70 years to treat patients who have infectious diseases. Since the 1940s, these drugs have greatly reduced illness and death [...]

Antibiotics have been used for more than 70 years to treat patients who have infectious diseases. Since the 1940s, these drugs have greatly reduced illness and death [...]

Antibiotics have been used for more than 70 years to treat patients who have infectious diseases. Since the 1940s, these drugs have greatly reduced illness and death [...]

ROCHESTER, Minn. — As employees and employers face higher health care costs, work site wellness centers are becoming increasingly more important to help control the [...]

ROCHESTER, Minn. — New research from Mayo Clinic shows that implementing a uniform method to care for lower-risk cardiac surgical patients improves outcomes, reduces patients’ time in the hospital and lowers overall per patient costs by 15 percent. The study is published in the May issue of Health Affairs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7zJv1NemII Journalists: Sound bites with Dr. Cook are available in the downloads. “In the high-acuity, full-service hospital, individual clinical judgment remains key, and some medical care demands this,” says David Cook, M.D., a Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist and primary author of the study. “But if this philosophy is applied universally, the same medical problem could be approached in 10 different ways by 10 different physicians, leading to unwarranted variability in costs, quality and outcomes.”

New York — March 3, 2014 — A new approach to breast reconstruction surgery aimed at helping patients’ bodies get back to normal more quickly cut their postoperative opioid painkiller use in half and meant a day less in the hospital on average, a Mayo Clinic study found. The method includes new pain control techniques, preventive anti-nausea treatment and getting women eating and walking soon after free flap breast reconstruction surgery. It has proved so effective, it is now being used across plastic surgery at Mayo Clinic. The findings were being presented at the Plastic Surgery Research Council annual meeting March 7-9 in New York. Breast reconstruction surgery is common after breast tissue is removed to prevent or treat breast cancer; in free flap breast reconstruction, the plastic surgeon transfers a section of tissue from one part of the body to the chest.  Using traditional care, the hospital stay averaged roughly four and a half days after that procedure. Using a new approach known as an “enhanced recovery pathway,” patients spent an average of three days in the hospital, the researchers found. Opioid painkiller use by patients in the hospital after surgery also declined with the new method, and those patients reported less pain at 24 hours after surgery than those who received the traditional approach. Calculated in oral morphine equivalents, opioid use averaged 142.3 milligrams over the first three days in the hospital, compared with an average of 321.3 milligrams over the same period with traditional care. Patients are giving the changes positive reviews, says senior author Michel Saint-Cyr, M.D., a plastic surgeon in the Breast Diagnostic Clinic at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX6avReaoNE A new study of attitudes about health care costs reveals that an overwhelming majority of U.S. physicians feel a responsibility to address costs, [...]