Patients who had access to their online records and who may have taken advantage of other features on a patient portal used the healthcare system more than those who didn't participate in the portal, according to a study by researchers at Kaiser Permanente. While this could drive up costs in the short term, more research will have to be done to determine whether or not portal users will see long-term health benefits from increased use of the system, said Ted Palen, MD, of the Institute for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente and the study's lead author.
A lawsuit filed Thursday claims a nonprofit hospital in northwest Chicago failed to provide charity care to two low-income, uninsured patients, reopening a longstanding controversy in Illinois over whether hospitals are doing enough charitable work to qualify for lucrative tax exemptions. Swedish Covenant Hospital gets about $8 million in annual tax breaks and owes the community a more reliable charity care system, the plaintiffs' attorney Alan Alop of the legal services group LAF said at a press conference Thursday in Chicago. The lawsuit claims unfair practices under the Illinois consumer fraud law and seeks $50,000 in punitive damages and a change in hospital policy.
Some 25 hospitals, including 520-bed Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, received a failing grade of F, while another 121 hospitals, including the Cleveland Clinic, got a barely passing D in the release this week of the controversial Leapfrog Group Hospital Safety Score, an effort to inform patients and payers which hospitals are most likely to cause avoidable harm.
A nonprofit quality improvement group formed by employers 12 years ago, Leapfrog launched its first hospital safety report card in June. That gave 2,651 hospitals an A, B, C, or a "grade pending," which Leapfrog officials said was a surrogate for a D or F grade, to give the hospital six months for more recent data to show improvement. In yesterday's update, all "grade pending" scores now are listed as a D or an F.
Executives of several hospitals that received F scores were incensed and said they were caught off guard. One declared that Leapfrog was attempting to "extort" hospitals to join Leapfrog's voluntary reporting system, while others said the methodology is flawed or unknown to anyone except Leapfrog.
The grades are based on how each hospital scores on 26 separate measures of safety divided among three categories of harm or risk of harm:
Preventable adverse outcomes of hospital care such as postoperative respiratory failure, pressure ulcer development, puncture or laceration, foreign object retention, bloodstream infections, or falls and trauma.
Process measures such as appropriate use of antibiotics or prophylaxis for patients at risk of blood clots.
Structural measures, such as whether the hospital uses computerized physician order entry systems or staffs an around-the-clock intensivist in its intensive care units.
The measures combine data that hospitals voluntarily report to Leapfrog or to the American Hospital Association with that which is publicly reported through Medicare data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospital Compare website.
To Megan Hildebrandt, President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) means she can no longer be denied health insurance because of her lymphatic cancer. There's a big catch: Coverage for the 28-year-old artist and many other Americans without insurance will come at a potentially unaffordable cost. The landmark healthcare law, which survived the threats of repeal and a Supreme Court review, now confronts another hurdle: living up to expectations. As the administration spells out the details, many uninsured will be surprised at how much they will have to pay. It may involve "very substantial amounts," and "there still will be a significant number of people who can't afford health coverage," said Ron Pollack, head of Families USA, a consumer group that backs the law.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has decided against creating a state-run health insurance exchange to implement a key part of President Obama's federal healthcare law. Brewer's decision means the federal government will set up an online marketplace for the state, offering subsidized private health coverage to the middle class. The governor reiterated her unwavering opposition to the healthcare overhaul, and said there were too many costs and questions associated with a state-run exchange. She sent a federal official a one-page letter conveying her decision.