After suffering with skin problems most of her young life, Jewel Harmon saw a pediatric dermatology expert from Louisville Wednesday — without ever leaving her hometown of Morehead, Ky., 150 miles away. The 5-year-old visited the doctor through "telemedicine," using videoconferencing to link patients and physicians from distant locations. "It is wonderful," said her mother, Jessica Noble, 29. "It's hard for me to get around. And I can't drive all the way to Louisville; I don't have reliable transportation to drive that far."
The doctor might be the same, but her bill's going to be higher. A strong trend of hospitals buying up physicians practices as well as hospital mergers is threatening to also drive up costs to patients—at least in the short term. A key factor in that consolidation trend is doctors now are willing to work for someone else to get rid of the hassle of paperwork, fighting with insurance companies, increased overhead costs and other duties that keep them away from patients.
WASHINGTON — Adjusting Medicare payments to reward doctors and hospitals in regions that provide high-quality care at low cost would be a bad idea, the National Academy of Sciences said Wednesday. After a three-year study, the academy's Institute of Medicine rebuffed arguments by members of Congress from states like Minnesota and Iowa who say Medicare has shortchanged their health care providers for decades. Congress should not create a "value index" to funnel Medicare money to areas that provide high-quality services at relatively low cost, the academy said. The 19-member panel said such an index would be unfair because it would "reward inefficient providers in low-cost regions and punish more efficient providers in high-cost regions."
Are expensive research hospitals pricing themselves out of the health care market? It's possible, if recent developments in Los Angeles are a sign of what's to come, according to a medical industry research group. HealthLeaders-InterStudy says Los Angeles' decision to go with Anthem Blue Cross for its 27,000 city workers shows that employers are eager to trim costs by avoiding high-priced academic and research institutions. The city's arrangement with Anthem, which excludes doctors from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and UCLA Health System, would stop referrals to those pricier, but often better, hospitals, according to HealthLeaders.
When Joseph R. Swedish was deciding whether to become chief executive of WellPoint Inc., he and his wife sat down with a pad and pen to list reasons why he should go to the troubled health insurer rather than continue leading Catholic hospital operator Trinity Health. In the hospital category, they listed "unfinished business." But under the WellPoint heading, Mr. Swedish noted opportunities to "restructure [the] company for success," and affect the "transformation of [the] nation's health care." Now four months into his stint atop the second-biggest U.S. insurer, Mr. Swedish is working to deliver. It is a tall order for the veteran hospital leader, 62 years old, who hasn't been an executive at a health plan before. [Registration required]
June was a bad month for Dallas County's lone public hospital. After all the patients were treated and the bills were added up, Parkland Memorial Hospital had a net loss of $5.3 million, its board of managers was told Wednesday. Officials blamed the overrun on a surge in charity care and fewer births. The hospital's 805 births in June were 4 percent fewer than expected. Most are covered by Medicaid, an important source of Parkland's income. The hospital also saw a drop in private-paying patients. That caused a $1.7 million revenue decline, said interim chief financial officer Ted Shaw.