Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding, among other topics, the individual mandate provision of Affordable Care Act. On Wednesday, at the Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights Department at Boston University School of Public Health, a panel of three legal scholars eflected on last week’s Supreme Court proceedings and explained what the arguments really were addressing.
A federal judge in Rockford has granted an injunction that will temporarily halt OSF HealthCare’s acquisition of Rockford Health System. The FTC challenged the acquisition last fall, saying the deal would be anticompetitive and could potentially raise prices on health care services for residents. But the health systems say they can address federal health care reform changes and diminishing state and federal reimbursements more efficiently as one entity.
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office is quietly circulating a proposal to more tightly regulate hospitals and doctors and the prices they are paid to care for patients. Providers and insurers would have to provide detailed price information to patients before they undergo a test or treatment, and the Division of Insurance and Department of Public Health would have new authority to limit the prices and market power of providers under Coakley’s proposal.
Four major Chicago teaching hospitals have landed on a list of institutions whose patients encounter substantially more medical complications than at the average hospital, according to data evaluated by the Medicare program. Medicare's first public effort to identify hospitals with patient-safety problems has pinpointed many prestigious teaching institutions around the nation, raising concerns about quality of care but also bolstering objections that the government's measurements are skewed.
Colorado Medicaid officials and a private insurer have quietly sought access to the state's prescription drug registry to help stop doctor-shopping and pharmacy-hopping for pain pills, but a state board denied them. The healthcare interests wanted access as part of wider efforts to slow an epidemic of painkiller overdoses and opioid misuse, which has resulted in a doubling of Colorado deaths and addicts seeking treatment. The state registry records every dispensed prescription for controlled substances, and allows doctors and pharmacists to review drug histories for their patients.
As new care models emerge, new types of leader are taking the helm: physician and nurse executives. There has been a major uptick in the number of requests for physicians and nurses who are prepared to lead health systems, academic medical centers, community hospitals, and managed care organizations. They are exchanging their lab coats for a seat in the C-suite, taking advantage of opportunities to lead during the post-reform era.