transparency
Boston hospital discloses wrong-side surgery
A surgeon at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center operated on the wrong side of a patient this week--and in a rare act of transparency, hospital officials disclosed the event promptly in an e-mail to... Read more...
Transparency getting big boost in Boston metro
A few developments are emerging in Boston that suggest that it may become one of the leading regions in the U.S. for disclosure of price and provider ranking information. On one hand, a growing... Read more...
OH plans, providers share pricing and quality information
This week seems to be a big one for transparency. Not only did Cigna roll out its nationwide physician and hospital rankings program nationwide, central Ohio got into the action, too. Anthem Blue... Read more...
Case study: OH hospital pays for bills for competing hospitals
One Ohio hospital is so bent on putting together a comparison shopping tool that it's willing to pay patients for competitive information. Alliance (OH) Community Hospital is paying patients $100 for... Read more...
CO bill would set standards for physician rating, tiering
Colorado's governor is considering a bill that would require the state's health plans to disclose the data and methods they use to create physician tiers. In so doing, the state would follow the... Read more...
Study: Very few child drug trials get outside oversight
A new study suggests that drug trials involving children get shockingly little oversight from outside safety monitoring groups. The study, which reviewed 739 international trials mounted between... Read more...
A potentially costly discovery?
As I understand it, basic economic theory suggests that buyers can't make rational decisions unless they can get and compare prices for equivalent products and services. If it's costly or difficult... Read more...
Physician ratings laws are inevitable
Physician ratings laws are inevitable Nearly every day, it seems, another health plan introduces a physician rating or ranking system--and doctors get angry. While the nuances of the debate vary... Read more...
PA hospitals won't charge for 'never events'
Pennsylvania's hospitals said yesterday that they won't charge for care related to serious medical mistakes that occur during an inpatient stay at an acute care hospital, such as wrong-body-part... Read more...
Kennedy asks again about HHS patient-safety data delay
I'm guessing Sen. Kennedy is losing patience by this point. For the third time in just one year, Kennedy has written a letter asking why the heck HHS hasn't filed regs which would implement a 2005... Read more...
