Healthcare transparency

A new report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers argues that with lots of high-profile scrutiny under way, non-profit hospitals need to do a much better job of measuring and communicating the community benefit and charity care they provide. What's more, PWC suggests, hospitals will need to develop patient-friendly pricing schemes to compliment their community-friendly policies. The consulting firm breaks down its recommendations across reporting, pricing and business relationship strategies, and …

The state of Texas has launched a public-private program intended to make healthcare pricing data widely available, to promote the use of electronic medical records and to strengthen the small-business health insurance market. The Texas Health Care System Integrity Authority, which includes consumers, employers, providers, payers and government agencies, will guide the project. The Authority will develop a network for securely exchanging electronic medical records and will also promote …

Perhaps responding to the blizzard of industry and consumer PR, Wal-Mart has decided to expand its $4 generic prescription program from a small pilot in the Tampa Bay, FL area to the entire state of Florida right away, rather than waiting for January 2007 for the rollout. With the statewide rollout, Wal-Mart has expanded the list of $4 generics to include 314 drugs, including oncology drug Megestrol and cholesterol …

Squeezing in under a state-mandated October 1 deadline for posting hospital pricing data online, the Minnesota Hospital Association (MHA) has become the latest hospital trade group to provide pricing data on member hospitals. The MHA just launched a new site providing detailed pricing data from specific Minnesota hospitals, offering data for the 50 most common in-patient procedures and 25 most common same-day procedures.

In forcing the issue of price reporting, the state of …

Carl Garrett was ready to go to India to get his shoulder surgery. But his trade union stepped in to prevent that from happening, touching off a debate about the appropriateness of routing employees offshore for cheaper care. Blue Ridge Paper Products of Canton, NC had begun working with Raleigh, NC-based IndUShealth to develop a program letting its workers get procedures done in India. Workers who agreed to make the trip were to get a healthy cut of the resulting savings. Garrett decided …

Six Washington doctors and the Washington State Medical Association are suing Regence BlueShield, claiming that the insurer's decision to exclude them from their "select" network due to poor quality is unfounded and damages their reputation. Regence has informed customers that 500 Washington state doctors would no longer be covered by the plan because they provide low quality, inefficient care. The physicians say that the insurer's quality ratings are completely …

Indiana has become only the second state to require hospitals to disclose medical errors. The State Board of Health has enacted rules that mandate hospitals report on 27 types of medical errors within 15 days of their occurrence. In 2004, Minnesota became the first state to call for error reporting. Starting in February, hospitals will post the data, but will not report which physician was responsible for the error. Though hospitals have previously resisted such measures, many are coming …

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) is demanding more bang for the buck for healthcare spending, as it picks a new administrator for its healthcare plan. While Blue Cross currently administers the pension fund's two self-funded PPOs, the contract expires at the end of 2007. CalPERS issued an RFP this week, requesting pitches to administer the contract starting in 2008.  This time around, CalPERS is asking candidates whether they will share information on …

After an unfortunate encounter with a jellyfish (and the first aid team that tried to help him), Jerry Avorn, a professor at Harvard Medical School, examines how doctor's choices for prescription drugs are often un-uniform and out of date. Avorn notes that there are two major problems when it comes to a physician's understanding of prescription drug. First, there's no system in place that tests similar treatments in head-to-head trials. Experimental drugs are tested against placebos, but …

CMS announced that it is rolling out the Physician-Hospital Collaboration Demonstration (PHCD), a three-year program designed to gauge whether hospitals can improve outcomes without raising costs, if they reward doctors for providing better care. Under the program, "the hospital would be paid its usual inpatient rate for the patient's care, but would pay to the physician a portion of the savings resulting from quality improvement and efficiency initiatives taken by the physician." …