Monday, September 17, 2007

Today's Globe: paying for errors, Native American vets at risk, Martin D. Abeloff, health reform

About half of Massachusetts hospitals say they have adopted policies to waive charges for serious medical errors such as wrong-site surgery and harmful medication mistakes, and others say they plan to, amid growing resistance from government and health insurers to paying for poor outcomes.

Mental health workers are looking for new ways to help Native American service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But in New England, the effort to reach out to Native American veterans is lagging, mental health specialists and some Native Americans say.

Martin D. Abeloff, 65, an international authority on the treatment of breast cancer and chief oncologist and director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University for the past 15 years, died of leukemia Friday at the center in Baltimore.

Health reform built on private insurance isn't working and can't work; it costs too much and delivers too little, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein, primary care doctors at Cambridge Hospital, write on the op-ed page.

Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 06:39 AM

Print | E-mail to a friend | Permalink | Subscribe via rss