Wider use of hospital observation units could save the U.S. healthcare system billions of dollars a year, a new study indicates. Only about one-third of U.S. hospitals have observation units. Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston, analyzed national survey data and published research to determine the average cost saving per observation unit and the number of hospitals that would benefit from having such a unit. They concluded that the average amount saved per patient could be $1,572 per visit when using an observation unit instead of inpatient admission. A hospital would save $4.6 million a year by avoiding 3,600 inpatient admissions.
The turbulent ride to health reform took another detour Wednesday when Gov. Dennis Daugaard said South Dakota would not set up an insurance exchange but instead would step aside to let the federal government come in and do it. Daugaard said an exchange would force the state to pay an unacceptable price, nearing $7 million a year. "It has become very apparent that operating our own exchange will simply not work for South Dakota," he said.
Negotiations to avert a breakdown in Maryland's unique system of regulating hospital prices have deteriorated into a stalemate between the state's largest insurer and the Maryland Hospital Association. CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield CEO Chet Burrell, speaking out for the first time about the talks, blames hospitals for their proposal to shift hundreds of millions in costs to CareFirst and other private insurers in an attempt to control rising Medicare spending.
The data requirements for launching an accountable care organization will cost smaller ACOs more than $1 million and large ones up to $4 million before they start operations, according to a Black Book survey that included 300 developing and established ACOs. The survey also reveals that 39% of ACO respondents plan to make most or all of their technology purchasing decisions before the third quarter of 2013. Twenty-eight percent of providers participating in ACOs say they already have their basic health information exchange (HIE) and interoperability strategies in place. The 2012 Black Book IT Yearbook for ACOs, which also ranks the top software and service vendors for ACOs, surveyed leaders of 1,100 healthcare organizations.
Wireless medical devices are potentially vulnerable to being remotely controlled by hackers and should be tracked more closely, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The investigation into electronic medical-device safety was initiated after computer-security researchers found dangerous vulnerabilities in insulin pumps. Diabetics rely on the pumps, which are worn next to the skin, to dispense insulin, a life-saving hormone. Representatives had asked last year for the GAO report, which called on the Food and Drug Administration to oversee better identification and investigation of security problems in electronic medical equipment.
Rachel Werner and R. Adams Dudley's article on Medicare's hospital value-based purchasing (VBP) program in the September Health Affairs concludes that the program is likely to have only a small impact on hospital payments. While it is true that relatively little money is likely to be redistributed from bottom-performing hospitals to those at the top, this is no reason to conclude that the program is not working as intended. Quite the contrary, it's performing exactly as intended so far.