Daily Rounds: Medical Cost Mystery; Statin Warnings; Tick Winter; NICU Webcams

Why medical bills are a mystery (The New York Times) "Rising health care costs are busting the federal budget as well as those of states, counties and municipalities. Policy makers and health care leaders have spent decades trying to figure out what to do about this. Yet their solutions are failing because of a fundamental and largely unrecognized problem: We don’t know what it costs to deliver health care to individual patients, much less how those costs compare to the outcomes achieved."

Drugs that target high cholesterol come with new cautions (The Boston Globe) - "Cholesterol-lowering statins, prescribed to some 30 million Americans, have begun to lose a bit of their luster. Signs are starting to appear that the risks of taking statins may outweigh the benefits for people at low risk of having a heart attack."

Busy tick season for UMass Memorial doctors (Worcester Telegram & Gazette) - "Doctors with UMass Memorial Healthcare screening for Lyme disease ordered 30 percent more lab tests this winter than the same four-month period from December through March a year ago. Dr. Richard T. Ellison III, chief epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, attributes that increase to a sharp decrease in deer tick die-off, the result of a relatively mild and snowless winter. But Dr. Mark S. Klempner, a Lyme disease specialist at Boston University, doesn't think that trend will necessarily continue."

Neonatal Webcams welcome the ever-present parents (amednews) - "Parkview is among a growing number of hospitals that have installed webcam systems in their NICUs. Many use systems called NICVIEW, which allow parents to log in from home computers or smartphones and watch a live video stream projected from a camera above the baby’s bed. Since January 2011, about 30 hospitals nationwide have installed NICVIEW systems or have acquired a demo system for further evaluation."