(Reuters) - Seven hospital systems in New Jersey and Pennsylvania will form what executives say will be the largest U.S. healthcare alliance in the country. The number of hospital mergers has soared in the past several years as providers band together to increase their power to negotiate higher reimbursement rates from insurers. Called AllSpire Health Partners, the alliance will allow the member institutions to save on costs and share medical expertise, the hospital systems said on Thursday. The alliance is part of a trend towards market consolidation as the Affordable Care Act is pushing hospitals to achieve greater negotiating leverage, said Joel Cantor, director of the Center for State Health Policy at Rutgers University.
Do not panic over healthcare costs. We may finally be on the cusp of learning to control them. So maintains McKinsey & Co. director Tom Latkovic in a new article. The key, he says: The entire system must shift to paying providers based on results, not tasks. To get there, says Latkovic, "the United States needs fewer component providers who specialize in a single task, such as taking diagnostic images. Instead, it will need more healers (providers who can achieve specific objectives for patients during episodes of care) and partners (providers who can help improve a patient's health and wellness over a longer period of time)."
Hospitals in Maryland are operating with record low margins, according to a new report by the state Health Services Cost Review Commission. Operating profits at Maryland hospitals dropped 71 percent in fiscal 2013, which ended June 30. The 46 hospitals reported a total operating profit of $99.8 million, down from $344.2 million a year before. The total profit margin among the hospitals was 3.39 percent. "I don't think we've ever seen margins this low, ever," said Steve Ports, deputy director of policy and operations for the HSCRC, which sets hospital rates.
"The lottery is a tax on people who don't understand mathematics." It's one of my favorite truisms because it aptly describes the magical thinking that so many people buy into about their chances of winning that $100 million jackpot, despite the fact that a person is more likely to get hit by lightning on his birthday. This truism also applies to misconceptions about lots of other probabilities -- like the risk of developing a serious reaction to the measles vaccine versus the benefits of averting a life-threatening measles epidemic. Or the risk of getting the wrong medication due to an EHR glitch versus the benefits that come from replacing paper with digital files.
It seems that every time researchers estimate how often a medical mistake contributes to a hospital patient's death, the numbers come out worse. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published the famous "To Err Is Human" report, which dropped a bombshell on the medical community by reporting that up to 98,000 people a year die because of mistakes in hospitals. The number was initially disputed, but is now widely accepted by doctors and hospital officials — and quoted ubiquitously in the media. In 2010, the Office of Inspector General for Health and Human Services said that bad hospital care contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients in Medicare alone in a given year.
There are less than two weeks to go until the Obamacare insurance marketplaces are launched on Oct. 1, and—surprise!—the U.S. is still getting ready. Some states still haven't released details about which prescription drugs will be covered under the health plans they're offering, the Obama administration has had to postpone its requirement that companies with 50 or more employees provide health insurance, and Georgia's state insurance commissioner Ralph Hudgens recently said the state would do "everything in our power to be an obstructionist" and make it difficult for Georgians to navigate the new marketplaces. Fear not, for there is one thing officials have fully embraced: funny videos.