On Nov. 27, one patient had a wound infection in her groin after an operation at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, CA. Another patient, who was in the hospital because of a blocked bowel, had a drug-resistant form of staphylococcus bacteria detected in his urine. But the hospital employee assigned to track and prevent the spread of infections and communicable diseases was unaware that the two patients were in the hospital, and an inspection the next day revealed other problems, according to state regulators. Citing such problems, the state inspectors said the hospital had "serious deficiencies," and federal officials said it did not meet Medicare's standards for infection control.
Despite Congress blocking a cut in Medicare payments to doctors, it has done nothing to solve the fundamental problem that caused the cut. The issue will now come back to haunt the next president and the next Congress, lawmakers and health policy experts say. Democrats and Republicans agree that the formula for paying doctors is broken, but say fixing it would be expensive. Lawmakers are pleading with physicians' groups to come forward with a comprehensive proposal, but that could be difficult because any new formula would almost surely produce winners and losers among doctors.
Doctors complain of shrinking payments from health insurers, pointing to insurance companies' huge profits and high CEO salaries. In response, insurers say doctors provide uneven care, overtreat patients, and push up costs for everyone. The decades-old confrontation has gotten more heated recently, as insurers squeeze doctors' payments as one way to bring down soaring healthcare costs.
Auditors have recovered nearly $700 million in Medicare overpayments to hospitals and other medical providers in a half-dozen states under a program that pays the auditing firms a portion of amounts they identify. Healthcare providers and hospitals have called it overly aggressive and too confrontational, but CMS has supported the move and is in the process of expanding it nationally. In all, the agency's recovery audit contractor program caught $1.03 billion of improper payments over about three years, about $992.7 million of which was overpayments by Medicare.
Despite many accolades, most people know little or nothing about the Alabama Child Caring Foundation. The private nonprofit group, founded by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama, enrolled its first child in March 1988 and today provides 10,000 children health coverage with low co-payments and no monthly premiums. The program is for uninsured Alabama children younger than 19 and whose parents cannot afford coverage but make too much money to qualify for government coverage through Medicaid or All Kids. Enrollment in the Child Caring Foundation is at an all-time high, but 2,000 eligible children are on the waiting list.
Southeast San Antonio is on track to get a 50-acre, $100 million medical campus following the purchase of the initial 28-acre tract by Baptist Health System.
The hospital will be built on Brooks City-Base (formerly Brooks Army Base), where Baptist will become the largest tenant.
The sale of the land for the hospital and accompanying medical office buildings represent a huge step forward in a plan that has been in the works for more than two years, says Brooks Development Authority CEO Donald Jakeway. "Timing is everything and we've gotten past the discussions, hypotheticals, and what ifs. Now that we've got a location will all the infrastructure in place to support project of this magnitude, we are ready move forward," he says.
Jakeway says Brooks City-Base is selling and leasing various parts of the former military base in anticipation of the Air Force departing from the base by 2011. Baptist already has an option for some of the land currently occupied by the Air Force. "This project is going to redefine the South Side," says Jakeway. "The hospital and medical buildings will represent hundreds of new jobs for this area, not to mention the addition of world class bioscience, biomedical, academic, environmental, research, and technology centers."
Details of the new hospital are still being worked out, but Mike Zucker, chief development officer of Baptist Health System, says all of the services currently offered at the existing Southeast Baptist Hospital will be transferred to the new facility. "We are still in the planning and development phase, but we anticipate that the staff and services will move over to the new facility. This is going to be a phenomenal site—we see this as an opportunity to build a world-class medical campus," he says.
The BDA is the owner, operator, and developer of Brooks City-Base. It is responsible for maintaining and redeveloping the nearly 1,300-acre complex into a technology center for bioscience, academics, environmental studies, and technical research.
Baptist Health operates five acute-care hospitals in San Antonio that combined have 1,753 licensed beds. The system is owned by Nashville-based Vanguard Health Systems.