Medications/Drugs News Headlines - Yahoo! News
Wide variation in willingness of ER doctors to prescribe painkillers
By Gene Emery (Reuters Health) - A national comparison of emergency room physicians has uncovered a broad range of prescribing patterns for painkillers, and high-volume prescribers may be encouraging long-term use of the drugs among their elderly patients. Based on medical histories of more than 377,000 Medicare recipients, researchers found that doctors considered frequent prescribers were 300 percent more likely to give out prescriptions for painkillers than low-volume physicians in the same hospital, and those heavy-prescribers were 30 percent more likely to give their patients prescriptions for longer periods. "These results suggest that an increased likelihood of receiving an opioid for even one encounter could drive clinically significant future long-term opioid use and potentially increased adverse outcomes among the elderly," the research team writes in the New England Journal of Medicine.
U.S. healthcare costs to escalate over next decade: government agency
The cost of medical care in the United States is expected to grow at a faster clip over the next decade and overall health spending growth will outpace that of the gross domestic product, a U.S. government health agency said on Wednesday. A report by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) cited the aging of the enormous baby boom generation and overall economic inflation as prime contributors to the projected increase in healthcare spending.
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