NPR and ProPublica have been reporting about nonprofit hospitals that seize the wages of lower income and working-class patients. Now, Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says hospitals could be breaking the law by suing these patients and docking their pay. And he wants some answers. NPR and ProPublica looked across six states, and in each, we found nonprofit hospitals suing hundreds of their patients. One hospital in particular jumped out — Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph, Mo. Thousands of patients a year are getting their paychecks docked by the hospital and its debt collection arm.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Obama was brief but to the point on healthcare. Declaring that about "10 million uninsured Americans finally gained the security of health coverage" because of the Affordable Care Act, he made clear he would veto any legislative attempt to roll it back. Thus, absent judicial action, the Act is here to stay. Politics notwithstanding, this means the healthcare industry's remarkable, ongoing transformation in the face of significant disruption will also continue. Simply put: government action combined with market forces is creating a business case study we should all be reading, even as it's still being written.
A coalition of 35 medical societies is urging federal regulators to make major changes to the Meaningful Use electronic health records (EHR) program. Led by the American Medical Association, the coalition wrote Wednesday to the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology arguing that Meaningful Use could harm patients if allowed to continue in its current state. "We believe the Meaningful Use certification requirements are contributing to EHR system problems, and we are worried about the downstream effects on patient safety," the groups wrote. The coalition called on regulators to decouple the certification of electronic health records from Meaningful Use, which imposes a timetable for EHR adoption and a series of penalties and incentives based on doctors' compliance.
The number of U.S. nurse practitioners nearly doubled over the last 10 years, rising from roughly 106,000 in 2004 to 205,000 as of Dec. 31, the profession's trade group said Wednesday. More than 15,000 people graduated from nurse practitioner programs between 2012 and 2013, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) also reported. The AANP is hoping to leverage the rising number of nurse practitioners to further shape policy debates in Washington, D.C., particularly amid the current doctor shortage. "The explosive growth of the nurse practitioner profession is a public health boon considering our nation's skyrocketing demand for high-quality, accessible care," said AANP President Ken Miller in a statement.
The polar vortex has abated (at least for the time being), but flu season is far from over. By now, mid-January, many of my colleagues have fallen ill and been confined at home with chicken soup and Netflix. This has been a bad year for the flu, in part because this year's vaccine hasn't been as effective as hoped. What's the economic toll of all those hours workers are spending in bed? It's tough to calculate, but two often quoted numbers point to significant losses: One 2007 study estimated that the flu costs approximately $7 billion in lost productivity, with 111 million workdays lost.
The brother of the man implicated in the fatal shooting of a doctor inside Brigham and Women's Hospital on Tuesday said he believes Stephen D. Pasceri was upset over information he received recently about the November death of their mother. Gregory Pasceri said his mother, Marguerite E. Pasceri, died at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester on Nov. 15 after being hospitalized there for a short time. The hospitalization came after the 78-year-old underwent a heart procedure at the Brigham, he said. Investigators said Stephen Pasceri, who lived in Millbury, went to the Boston hospital Tuesday morning, asked for Dr. Michael J. Davidson by name, and then shot the doctor twice before shooting himself to death.