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Trade group plans surgical fires guidelines
Surgical fires are a rare complication of surgical procedures--occurring roughly 50 to 100 times per year out of the 50 million surgeries performed in the U.S.--but they can have devastating results.... Read more...
NYC doctor may have given patients Hep C
There's a hepatitis C scare on in New York City, where authorities have asked 4,500 people to get tested after their contact with a local anesthesiologist. The anesthesiologist, who hasn't been named, may have spread the disease as he or she put patients under. To date, three people treated by the physician have been diagnosed with hep C. Tests suggest that the patients picked up the illness while getting intravenous anesthesia meds during outpatient procedures. However, it's not clear …
... Read more...AMA tackles out-of-network fines by health plans
The AMA has decided to go to war against insurers who impose fines on doctors if patients use out-of-network labs. While the dispute began with UnitedHealth Group, which has set plans in motion to impose such fines, the AMA is concerned enough about the trend that it is instituting a broader campaign opposing the institution of such fines by any insurer. The group is supporting …
... Read more...Physicians question CMS P4P effort
Though it hasn't started yet, physicians are already questioning whether CMS's pay-for-performance program will work over the long term. Physician critics say that many practices won't have the time, resources or staff to begin quality reporting. To get the 1.5 percent bonus, physicians will be asked to report on 74 measures for claims between July 1st and December 31st. To make this happen, it's likely that the practices will have to upgrade their IT infrastructure, a step which can be …
... Read more...Medicare providers owe $1B in back taxes
A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has concluded that Medicare providers and suppliers owe the U.S. government at least $1 billion in back taxes going back almost a decade. Federal researchers found that 21,000 outpatient providers and suppliers who billed Medicare over the first nine months of 2005, or roughly 5 percent, had failed to pay taxes. More than half of unpaid bills were for payroll taxes which were collected from workers but never sent to the IRS, the …
... Read more...Military care misses brain injuries
Despite the importance of such diagnoses to wartime medical care, the military hasn't developed a comprehensive plan to treat soldiers with mild and moderate brain injuries, according to a new report. The Pentagon has had traumatic brain injury (TBI) on its radar since at least mid-2006, when a military-generated report suggested that it was critical to develop good screenings for blast-associated TBI and other forms of brain injury. While the military does a good job of treating …
... Read more...Mental health crisis in New Orleans
For obvious reasons, the health system in New Orleans is under reconstruction, and still hasn't reached pre-Katrina service levels. While things are bad enough for the medically ill, the mentally ill are facing, if anything, an even worse crisis. While mental health cases shot up in the wake of Katrina, climbing to an estimated 11.3 percent of the population, the city's ability to treat them …
... Read more...SPOTLIGHT: Too soon for Medicare P4P?
Given the rumblings in Washington, it seems certain that Medicare will institute pay for performance measures sometime soon. Armed with in-house studies, CMS execs and policy wonks seem convinced that pay for performance can turn around costs for the hugely expensive public health insurance program. However, critics argue that it's premature to institute P4P measures. After all, they note, …
Keeping control of pricing data
With the growth of transparency initiatives, health plans have a powerful incentive to publicize individual providers' prices. But most providers wouldn't want them to publish pricing data unexpectedly. If pricing data goes public without providers knowing, it could leave them unprepared for questions that patients might pose, or make them look bad by presenting figures out of context, notes an article on HealthLeadersMedia.com. Today, it's important to go over managed care …
... Read more...SPOTLIGHT: Hospital-at-home care has come of age
While the idea of providing hospital care at home dates back to the 1960s, it hasn't been widely implemented yet, particularly in the United States. But it's high time that U.S. healthcare providers take a closer look at this approach, particularly given the technology we have available to support remote patients, argues Vince Kuraitis of Better Health Technologies. Not only does home-based hospital care save money, it sidesteps the risk of hospital-acquired infections and keeps the …
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