If you think Pittsburgh's health insurance landscape has changed dramatically in the last year, you ain't seen nothing yet, according to six of the region's top insurance executives. Expect more friction between physicians and health plans as insurers try to wring what they call unnecessary procedures, scans and surgeries out of the system.
The ousted CEO of beleaguered Wyckoff Heights Medical Center had the hospital buy a $33,000 stretch limo for his use and expensed multiple $300 staff dinners, the man brought in to replace him revealed. "My predecessor spent an enormous amount of money," Ramon Rodriguez, interim CEO of the debt-burdened Bushwick hospital, told the Daily News Wednesday.
Fourteen hospitals in New York and six other states agreed to pay more than $12 million in total to settle allegations that they submitted false claims to Medicare, the U.S. Justice Department said. Four hospitals affiliated with Adventist Health System/Sunbelt Inc. in Florida will pay the largest sum, $3.9 million, according to an e-mailed statement by the Justice Department. Plainview Hospital in Plainview, New York, will pay $2.3 million, the largest single hospital payment, the agency said.
Negotiators for Jackson Health System and SEIU Local 1991 agreed Tuesday to a contract that calls for $52 million in concessions for each of the next three years, but workers could get some of that money back if they find ways of saving the hospitals money or gaining new revenue. The tentative agreement will be voted on next week by the bargaining units covering nurses and other healthcare professionals. A third unit, covering physicians, was still in discussions with management late Tuesday afternoon.
The group formed to oppose the now-scuttled acquisition of Christ Hospital in Jersey City by Prime Healthcare Services met in front of the hospital Tuesday urging hospital officials to seek input from the community on its pending reorganization. Monday night, hospital officials announced it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, in the wake of last week's news that Prime had withdrawn its bid to purchase the Palisade Avenue medical facility.
Malpractice findings are increasingly easy to find on websites maintained by medical boards in 19 states, but not in Minnesota, where regulators have resisted efforts to make more information available to people who want to check into the backgrounds of their doctors. The Minnesota Board of Medical Practice also doesn't disclose whether doctors have been disciplined by regulators in other states or lost their privileges to work in hospitals and other facilities for surgical mistakes and other problems—information provided in 13 other states.