Independence Blue Cross, Aetna, and four other insurers serving the Philadelphia region will start paying more than 150 family doctors and other caregivers to more closely track their patients' care and conditions. About 220,000 patients in Southeastern Pennsylvania will participate in the effort, which seeks to make caregivers more accessible to their patients through e-mail and phone calls and to educate them to take better care of themselves. The effort is part the Prescription for Pennsylvania proposal, which seeks to expand access to health coverage for the uninsured and reduce medical errors.
Greenwich Hospital is the third Connecticut hospital in the last year fined by the U.S. Department of Justice for overcharging Medicare program for certain cancer treatments. The hospital agreed to pay $605,274 in a settlement. Federal law allows hospitals to bill Medicare for one unit of chemotherapy per patient visit. Instead, Greenwich Hospital often billed Medicare for up to five units of chemotherapy per visit for bills sent to Medicare from 2000to 2004.
More than eight months after its entire surgical unit was shut down because of a reported spike in post-surgical deaths, Southern Illinois Veterans Affairs hospital has resumed some outpatient surgeries. The VA halted all surgeries at the facility when at least nine deaths between October 2006 and March 2007 were "directly attributable" to substandard care. There was no immediate timetable for resuming more complicated, inpatient surgeries at the hospital.
Seven percent of Americans said they or someone in their household decided to marry in the past year so they could obtain healthcare benefits via their spouse, according to a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The survey also found that healthcare costs outranked housing costs, rising food prices and credit card bills as a source of concern. Of those surveyed, 28% said they had experienced serious problems because of the cost of healthcare.
A study has found that despite assertions that high malpractice rates are driving them out of the state, Massachusetts doctors are paying less than they were in 1990, after adjusting for inflation.
Massachusetts ranks fourth in the nation for money paid to settle malpractice cases. It is also one of 21 states described by the American Medical Association as being in a crisis because of high medical malpractice payments and lack of strict laws capping settlements.
A legal-aid lawyer's effort to improve healthcare for poor people has left Connecticut's Medicaid program in turmoil, jeopardizing healthcare for thousands of poor residents. It started in 2004, when a staff attorney at the New Haven Legal Assistance Association filed a request under Connecticut's freedom of information law to get health-maintenance organizations to disclose how often the HMOs' computers rejected pharmacy requests to fill Medicaid enrollees' prescriptions. Three years later, the governor demanded more accountability, and when two companies refused to follow the order the state program stripped all four companies of duties, such as setting provider rates.