Healthcare Innovations

Demand Curb

The economic behavior of the medical consumer is really just starting to be understood, but it seems like somethings would be obvious.

Yahoo! News: As Costs of Drugs Shift to Consumers, Spending Drops. by Amanda Gardner, HealthDay Reporter, 2007-Jul-3

"Prescription drugs are just like apples or breakfast cereal. When they increase in price, patients use less of them, and that's true even of patients who have chronic illnesses," said Dana Goldman, lead author of a study appearing in the July 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Error Reduction Methods

The University of Minnesota School of Public Health announces they've identified one more method of reducing errors at hospitals.

Yahoo! News: Computerized Ordering Cuts Medication Errors. 2007-Jun-27 (HealthDay)

hospitals with the highest rate of medication errors -- more than 12 percent -- showed the most improvement when they switched to computerized drug ordering systems. They also found that while the use of computerized systems reduced medication errors overall, there was no decrease in one type of error -- prescribing the wrong drug. Currently, only about 9 percent of U.S. hospitals have computerized prescription systems, which can take 12 to 36 months to implement.