New York's charity care system, partly financed by an 8.95 percent surcharge on hospital bills, is one of the most complicated in the nation, but many states have wrestled with aggressive debt collection by hospitals in recent years. Like New York, several passed laws curbing hospitals' pursuit of unpaid bills, including Illinois, California and Minnesota. But a new study of New York hospitals' practices and state records finds that most medical centers are violating the rules without consequences, even as the state government ignores glaring problems in the hospitals' own reports.
In a space of 12 months, Central Floridians will see leaders who have been at the helm of three top health institutions for more than two decades leave, and make way for a new generation of leaders. Florida Health Care Coalition's new president, Karen van Caulil, assumed her position in October and replaced Becky Cherney, who stepped down after 27 years. Health Central's top executive, Richard Irwin, will leave his post of 25 years at the end of March, and businessman Ken Harker will take on part of those duties. And this summer M.D. Anderson Cancer Center-Orlando President Dr. Clarence Brown will hand the reins to Dr. Mark Roh.
Republican lawmakers' quest to expand a Medicaid privatization program statewide was dealt a blow this week after federal health officials said the state could not impose $10 monthly premiums on Medicaid beneficiaries. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also denied the state's proposal to charge $100 co-pays for any non-emergency ER visits, according to a letter sent Thursday. Federal health officials said the fees violated several statutes designed to protect nearly 3 million of state's most vulnerable. Lawmakers passed the bills last year trying to rein in the Medicaid budget of more than $20 billion a year and increase accountability for providers.
Each day, executives and analysts at Centene Corp. peer into a digital dashboard, hunting for spikes in health care usage—and costs. Their proprietary database, known internally as Centelligence, helps them predict the likelihood that a patient will, for instance, develop diabetes or asthma. And they can drill into individual patients' records to pinpoint causes. Like bond traders poring over rates and yields, Centene's prognosticators dissect health data to play the spread between what state governments will pay Centene for Medicaid management—and what costs Centene can shave for a specific subpopulation's health care.
The Leapfrog Group has named the nation's top hospitals for 2011, and the list shines a spotlight on how health IT can help improve patient care—even preventing medical errors that can lead to adverse drug reactions and deaths. Leapfrog bases its annual ranking on a survey of hospitals' processes, quality of care, and patient safety. Its evaluation includes "stringent IT requirements," said Leah Binder, Leapfrog CEO.
When President Nixon wanted to overhaul the health care system to provide universal coverage, his administration turned to Stuart Altman. Ten years later, when Congress created a commission to improve the Medicare payment system, Altman led the effort. And, in the early '90s, when newly elected Bill Clinton assembled a team to guide his health care policies, Altman was among the first chosen. There may be no single person with a longer or deeper history in the health care overhaul efforts of the past 40 years than Altman, a professor of national health policy at Brandeis University in Waltham.