Healthcare Administration

The physician group serving Boston's Caritas Christi Health Care system has replaced the acting chief of its physicians group in the midst of an accounting scandal. The 2,000-member physicians group, which auditors say overstated revenue by nearly $10 million, has been a money-loser for the system for several years. The system, which is run by the Archdiocese of Boston, has been in talks to transfer ownership of its six hospitals to Catholic hospital chain Ascension Health. As part of the …

A new law that would allow providers to include non-compete clauses in some physician contract is making headway in Tennessee. The bill, which applies to podiatrists, chiropractors, dentists, medicine and surgery doctors, optometrists and psychologists, would let providers bar doctors from practicing within a 10-mile radius of a practice where they'd once been employed--or within 10 miles of any facility where the provider offers services. (The last clause clearly attempts discourage the …

With hospital industry pricing policies under increasing pressure, the Wisconsin Hospital Association has taken the bull by the horns. The hospital trade group is now recommending that uninsured patients automatically receive fee discounts similar to those enjoyed by managed care plans. The group is also suggesting that members work harder to let the uninsured know about charity care and financial assistance options.

WHA's recommendations aren't being made in a vacuum. Not only do …

A new study has quantified something physicians already knew: that they contribute surprisingly big bucks to hospital revenue. The study, published by physician search firm Merritt, Hawkins & Associates, concluded that an average physician will generate $1.5 million in net revenue a year for affiliated hospitals. (MH&A got its data from hospital chief financial officers.) This number has actually fallen since 2004, when revenue generated by all specialists hit $1.9 million--a fact …

How can hospitals benefit from the research being done by CMS on pay for performance? In part, just by accepting that improving quality results requires a high level of commitment, according to Richard Norling, CEO of Premier, which runs the P4P pilot on CMS's behalf. Norling, who's in Washington, DC this week for the American Hospital Association's annual meeting, conducted a briefing yesterday on lessons learned from the P4P demonstration program, the Hospital Quality Incentive …

As IRS scrutiny of non-profits continues, it makes sense for hospitals to proactively prove that they're justifying their tax-free status. That's why, in part, that Missouri hospitals have come together to report on their charity-care and community efforts, which they say were worth $1.1 billion last year. The new report, which was prepared by the Missouri Hospital Association, calculates that the state's hospitals contribute $7.8 billion in salaries, benefits, taxes and capital …

Increasingly, hospital CEOs are finding that their bonuses depend on how well they do at creating a safe environment for care. In the past, CEOs could expect to do well if their facility was profitable and beds were full, but today, with regulatory pressure mounting and public scrutiny on the rise, safety has become an important part of their job. Across the country, roughly half of hospital CEOs must meet safety goals--such as the number of patients wearing bar-coded wrist-bands or …

Working with the Joint Commission, the World Health Organization has begun promoting a list of nine solutions designed to prevent care errors prevalent around the world. The solutions include methods for avoiding errors in administering look-alike, sound alike drugs; assuring correct patient identification; streamlining patient hand-over communications; hand hygiene; and needle reuse and injection safety. For example, the WHO/Joint Commission suggests several methods for verifying patient …

Following national trends, the Texas state legislature has passed a new measure which will make hospital infection rates public. The measure requires hospitals to report on rates of several specific infections, including bloodstream infections and surgical site infections from colon, hip and knee surgeries. Analysts predict that the legislation will spawn tighter methods to track in-hospital sources of infection, including the use of nasal swabs to test for methicillin-resistant …

Hoping to rebuild services that were cut or reduced after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana State University officials have asked state legislators for more than $200 million above and beyond the existing state budget. Services went away, in part, because Katrina-related flooding closed New Orleans-based Charity Hospital, which provided a wide range of services to poor and uninsured. More than half of the money, about $122 million, would be used to rebuild the still-devastated New Orleans-area …