profits

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has announced that it has become the first not-for-profit hospital system to comply fully with the strict reporting and internal control requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which applies to publicly-held companies and was designed to prevent Enron-scale financial catastrophes in that arena. While not-for-profits don't have to comply, experts say more of them are moving in the direction of fuller disclosure, assuming that the spotlight will be on …

> The Schwarzenegger administration has decided it's not politically or logistically feasible to shift a half-million elderly and disabled Californians on Medi-Cal to managed-care plans, even though the state will forgo $360 million in federal Medicaid funds by abandoning the plan. The federal timetable for the shift was too strict, administration officials said. Article

> A federal judge has ruled that Mobile Infirmary (of …

The nonprofit hospital world has been in the news lately, and this week a study of all the studies ever done on the nonprofit/for-profit contrast came out in Health Affairs. The well-known study confirmed that nonprofit hospitals offer a little more charity care and have slightly lower costs than for-profits. But then again, there are three factors that make those results a …

The non-profit Markle Foundation released a report today that assesses the impact e-prescribing had during the response to Hurricane Katrina. In the days after the storm struck, a group of non-profits and tech companies pooled their resources to launch KatrinaHealth.org, a Web site that gave authorized medical professionals online access to medical information gathered from a number of sources. Organizers were able to gain access to prescription data from government databases, private …

With health plans like UnitedHealth and Blue Cross of California under public scrutiny for their business models, a move is underway to cap health plan profits. California insurance commissioner John Garamendi is behind one proposal, which seeks to cap health plan profits. Two separate bills proposed by Sacramento lawmakers seek to accomplish similar goals. One of the measures seeks to set a cap on patient copays. The legislative action is drawing quiet support from both hospitals and …

> McKesson released so-so numbers for the first quarter, with revenues up 12 percent but profits down 15 percent. But provider technologies are another story, with the unit reporting a revenue gain of 30 percent. Article

> Chutes & Ladders: Boston Scientific chief medical officer Mary Russell is resigning. Russell played a key role in the development of the company's Taxus …

The behavior of health insurers is back in the news in a big way this week. As premiums have gone up and as health insurer profits have gone up even more, the reputation of health insurers as measured in public opinion polls has stayed just above that of the tobacco companies. Now one of the nation's giants, Wellpoint's Blue Cross unit, is accused of canceling the policies of people …

Nervous days at Accenture after the management consultancy reported a 65 percent drop in profits, largely as an result of problems with company's $3.5 billion contract with the Britain's National Health Service to build and manage IT services for parts of the massive Connecting for Health Initiative. Accenture now says it is unlikely that the contract will bring in the extra business it had anticipated. Accenture CEO Bill Green comments, "I am taking personal responsibility for getting the NHS issue behind us. These results are unacceptable." Article

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center reported much improved numbers for the first half of its current fiscal year. UPMC said revenues were up 13 percent to $2.8 billion for the six months ending December 31. The result: a much more profitable performance for the health network than last year. Profits jumped 73 percent to $225 million from $130 million. Notable bright spots included a 16 percent increase in outpatient activity and overall admissions. The hospital chain's investments …

Boston Scientific said its profits rose 12 percent in the fourth quarter despite declining sales. The company said overall sales were down 4 percent. Sales of the company's best known product, the Taxus drug-coated stent, fell 12 percent to $606 million from $691 million. More details are expected today on how Boston Scientific plans to handle the quality control problems raised recently by the FDA. Article