A report by UnitedHealth Group said the U.S. could reduce spending on Medicare and Medicaid by doing a better job of coordinating patient care, particularly for those with chronic illnesses such as diabetes. The report's author, Simon Stevens, said the U.S. could save more than half a trillion dollars over a decade by changing how it cares for patients on those government health plans, which provide coverage for the elderly, disabled, and low income.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will stay in her post, a White House official said Wednesday. Several of President Obama's top Cabinet officials have either stepped down or announced their plans to do so relatively soon, as is common at the beginning of a president's second term. But the White House official said Sebelius—along with Attorney General Eric Holder and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki—will be sticking around.
In Medicare's new program that ties about $1 billion in payments to quality of care, hospitals in Fort Wayne, Ind., are faring the best on average while hospitals in Washington, D.C., are doing the worst, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of the country's 212 major health care markets. All seven hospitals in the nation's capital are having their Medicare payments reduced because they scored poorly in the Value-Based Purchasing program, which rewards places that do better in following basic standards of care and on patient satisfaction surveys and punishes those that underperform. The government began assessing these bonuses and penalties this month as one part of an effort to improve medical quality and to eventually reduce costs. In Washington, hospitals will lose on average 0.33 percent of their payments.
Cleveland Clinic is the health care industry trailblazer when it comes to publishing its clinical outcomes. As discussed in this earlier story ("How To Report Quality To The Public"), the Ohio hospital system annually publishes Outcomes Books that detail the clinical performance of each of its departments. The author called the hospital's corporate office to find out more about the history of the Outcomes books. He soon found himself on the phone with the CEO. It turns out that Delos "Toby" Cosgrove, who runs the $6 billion health system, is also the organization's unofficial transparency officer. He was the guy who developed the Outcomes Book concept in the first place.
"What a loss." That was the first thought that came to Maryland Hospital Association CEO Carmela Coyle's mind when I asked her about the news that LifeBridge Health CEO Warren Green was retiring. Coyle described Green as a senior leader in Baltimore's health care industry. The author sought Green's advice on what hospitals should be doing to prepare for the changes to the health care industry in store under federal health reform.
Dr. Ron Anderson spent 29 years as CEO of Parkland Hospital. Now, he wants to create a new collaborative effort to keep people healthy and out of hospitals. Anderson wants to create the Dallas County Community Health Institute. He calls it a move from traditional healthcare to public health. "I think that's where reform in the nation has failed," Anderson said. "Because it's not really paid attention to things we can prevent. That's the cheapest. Prevention is always better than a cure. That was said in the 15th century, and I believe that. And so that's what I'd like to spend some time doing."