Some hospitals exceed Medicare-allowed costs by up to 1000%

Hospitals in the United States with the highest charge-to-cost ratios billed uninsured consumers and out-of-network patients more than 10 times the cost allowed by Medicare, according to recent study data.“There is no justification for these outrageous rates but no one tells hospitals they can’t charge them,” study researcher Gerard F. Anderson, PhD, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a press release. “For the most part, there is no regulation of hospital rates and there are no market forces that force hospitals to lower (Read more...)

Speaker: Protocol T not applicable in European practice

VIENNA — Results of DRCR.net Protocol T may signal a paradigm shift in the treatment of diabetic macular edema, but are scarcely applicable to the European clinical context, where ranibizumab is marketed and used at a higher 0.5 mg concentration, a specialist told colleagues here.“Protocol T showed superior efficacy of aflibercept, particularly in the group of patients with more severe disease. However, the 0.3 mg ranibizumab concentration used in the study is the one registered for the US market, which is nearly half the concentration we use in Europe,” Francesco (Read more...)