Earlier this month, Boston’s own Atul Gawande surprised many readers of The New Yorker by praising The Cheesecake Factory for demonstrating how the US healthcare system could provide more standardized, high-quality patient care. In the labor intensive world of healthcare delivery, as physician and patient safety advocate Lucian Leape, of the Harvard School of Public Health has pointed out, quality patient care (and thus customer satisfaction) depends on whether health care employers treat their staff respectfully. While the Cheesecake Factory may have developed a highly efficient and thus profitable business model, it seems to be one based on punitive labor practices.
Nearly four out of five high-risk hospitals nationwide have failed to implement safeguards to secure radiological material that could be used in a "dirty bomb," according to a draft report by congressional investigators. Eleven years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks focused attention on the possibility that terrorists could use crude nuclear devices, the analysis by the Government Accountability Office described numerous instances of failure to secure highly radioactive material at hospitals.
What happened in Maine is a sobering reality check on the oft-repeated myth that getting rid of ObamaCare and other consumer protections is the answer to our health care problems. If the government will just get out of the way, the myth-makers would have us believe, the free market will magically transform our dysfunctional health care systems into one of the world’s very best. The voters in Maine fell for magical thinking in 2010 when they turned over control of the legislature and governor’s office to candidates who promised to block ObamaCare and implement what they called "common sense" free-market solutions.
Massachusetts hospitals face growing financial strains. Two dozen—more than a third of the state's total—lost money last year, according to a new report from the Division of Health Care Finance and Policy. Among the biggest money losers were Boston Medical Center, which posted a $25.1 million deficit, Steward St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton, which lost $20.9 million, and Quincy Medical Center, which was $18.5 million in the red. The industry's performance was worse than in 2010, when 16 hospitals posted losses, and in 2009, when 13 were unprofitable.
Come January, Highmark Inc. is giving customers a first taste of life without UPMC. Pittsburgh-based Highmark, Pennsylvania's largest health insurer, announced on Monday some of the details of its revived Community Blue, a new version of an old, select-network insurance product line. The new version could offer premium discounts of up to 25 percent compared to plans that have full access to UPMC's hospitals and doctors, according to Highmark, although brokers are expecting a smaller discount. Most hospitals and doctors in the UPMC healthcare system, the region's largest, will be considered "out of network," however.
More than 2,700 diseases can now be identified through gene testing, compared with fewer than 800 in 2000, according to the government-funded website GeneTests. DNA screening offers the potential to transform medicine by predicting the risk of cancer or other severe diseases years in advance. Yet the very nature of the tests creates the potential for catastrophic error because they're often used to make irreversible decisions, such as terminating a pregnancy or undergoing surgery to prevent cancer.