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Hospital Pricing Irks Nurses; More Jobs, Less Pay

 |  By Chelsea Rice  
   May 20, 2013

In this week's news: Explaining hospital pricing to employees, exploring the complicated relationship between healthcare jobs and spending, and protecting staff and employers with new social media laws in several states.

Employees and hospital pricing
The federal government's release of hospital pricing dataisn't only disruptive to hospital executives and consumers. At least one healthcare workers' union is crying foul. National Nurses United, one of the largest organized labor groups in the country, is criticizing hospitals about the high prices of care published in the hospital billing data from CMS this month.

"Hospitals should be providers of care, not loan sharks," said Deborah Burger, RN, co-president of NNU. "But we also know that price gouging is widespread throughout the health care industry, and that is a symbol of what is wrong with our profit-focused healthcare system, and why we need real reform."

Such strong language contributes to the palpable tension between employees and their employers, who under the weight of this data, some of it disconcerting, can't help but seem greedy.

If I were working at the hospital with the highest billing rates in the nation, or even at a hospital with higher rates than the rest of my community, I would want some explanation from leadership.
Employees are the face of a hospital's brand, if questions about pricing go unaddressed will they want to continue being stamped with yours?

The healthcare jobs paradox, explained
Healthcare has managed to sustain and create jobs during the recession and economic rebound. But the anxiety about spending isn't going away.

An article this week in The Economist puts it succinctly: "Health spending may be disastrous for America's economic future; for many local economies, it is a boon…"

How the government will be able to cut or curb spending remains to be seen. In the meantime, healthcare employment is expected to continue to grow. But the nature of the jobs will change, research suggests, putting future healthcare wages in peril:

"Given that labour accounts for more than half of hospital costs, hospitals will probably try to squeeze more from their workers. Already services are moving from hospitals to clinics and from clinics to homes; jobs at clinics pay less than similar jobs at hospitals, explains Anthony Carnevale of Georgetown University's Centre on Education and the Workforce."

Social media protections spread
Healthcare may be slow to unleash the power of social media, but providers are becoming increasingly more active at tweeting, liking, and friending—especially at the office. Because patient privacy can easily be violated by something as innocuous as a tweet, however, social media workplace policies are growing more important.

Utah and Colorado this week joined Illinois, California, Maryland, Arkansas, and New Mexico to pass social media workplace privacy laws. Washington state may be next.  

Utah's Internet Employment Privacy Act (H.B. 100) officially took effect on Tuesday. It protects employee privacy across the platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Similar to those passed in other states this year, it prevent employers from requesting:

  • Social media account usernames or passwords from current and potential employees
  • That current and potential employees follow, friend, or connect with the employer/company
  • That current and potential employees adjust their account privacy settings

But just as importantly, provisions of the law protect employers as well. Employers may circumvent these provisions if an employee has given the employer reason to investigate whether proprietary information may have been disseminated via social media.

Chelsea Rice is an associate editor for HealthLeaders Media.
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