Wells Fargo & Co, one of the largest U.S. employers, plans to cut costs by moving its workers into insurance plans that encourage them to spend less on healthcare. The bank told Reuters that it is rolling out a new insurance approach next year that will give employees accounts to help cover medical expenses. They can either put their own pretax dollars in the accounts, or pay higher insurance premiums and have the company fund the account. If employees opt to put their own money into the accounts, they are on the hook for more of their medical expenses if they get sick. If they stay healthy, they benefit from lower premiums.
These types of accounts are believed to be useful in encouraging consumers to think more about how they are spending healthcare dollars. For most employers, these accounts are one option among many for health insurance, said Alexander Domaszewicz, a principal with human resources consulting firm Mercer. Only a handful of other companies, including General Electric Co and JPMorgan Chase & Co, are going the same route as Wells Fargo and offering only account-based healthcare plans.
Hospitals are naturally noisy places—alarms, machines, carts and elevators going at all hours. High noise levels have been shown to hinder patients' sleep, raise stress levels and even contribute to medical errors. Memorial Hospital in Belleville recently launched the SHHH campaign, a program used by hospitals nationwide to reduce extraneous noise. The hospital's maintenance staff replaced squeaky wheels, installed noise-absorbing ceiling tiles and flattened the thresholds at the entrances to patient rooms. Patients are given headphones for their televisions. Staff members cut back on overhead paging announcements from an average of 100 pages to just three over a 24-hour period by sending texts to doctors instead. White background noise is piped through speakers to drown out more irritating sounds. "We really want it to be a calm, quiet and healing environment," said Mimi Leuchtefeld, a registered nurse and patient care coordinator at Memorial. "The main idea is to increase awareness of how noise levels can affect patient healing and progress."
The lobbyists for U.S. health insurers surely have to be feeling a little uneasy knowing that thousands of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who have been marching and protesting in Washington as well as New York and other cities might target them in the days ahead. After all, the headquarters of the insurers' biggest lobbying and PR group, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), at 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., is just blocks away from Freedom Plaza, where the demonstrators have set up camp, and problems with health insurers appear to be near the top of the list of protesters' concerns. Health Care for America Now, an umbrella advocacy group that played a key role in the healthcare reform debate, last week analyzed the 546 comments that had been posted by then on "We are the 99 percent" Tumbler site. It found that 262 of the comments mention such problems as getting denials for doctor-ordered care from their insurance companies and having to forego treatment because of hefty out-of-pocket costs.
Several hundred hospital workers began a 24-hour strike Wednesday outside Keck Medical Center of USC. X-ray technicians, certified nursing assistants and housekeeping staff are picketing over working conditions, particularly the ability of workers to have a say in how the hospital is staffed, said John Borsos, vice president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which represents 640 hospital employees. The National Labor Relations Board in Los Angeles is scheduled to hear workers' grievances later this month, Borsos said. Contract negotiations between the union and the medical center, formerly known as USC University Hospital, began in the fall of 2010. Officials said in a statement that the hospital pays its unionized employees some of the highest wages in the region. "It's disappointing that this is happening," said Matt McElrath, the hospital's human resources director. Meanwhile, he said, hospital operations have not been disrupted.
UnitedHealthcare of New England has just added considerable momentum to a local effort to encourage young primary care physicians to practice in Rhode Island. The health care provider has donated $250,000 to the Rhode Island Foundation's loan forgiveness program for primary care professionals. The goal of the loan forgiveness program is to increase the number of primary care physicians practicing in the state by helping them pay off their student loans. This in turn will help improve access to primary care for Rhode Islanders. The program awards up to $20,000 annually for up to four years for each physician. UnitedHealthcare's donation brings the Foundation's fund total to $1.35 million. A 2008 study by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that only 2% of students graduating from medical school plan to practice primary care. Also, it is predicted that the United States will need 40% more primary care physicians by 2020 to meet increasing demand for such care. Currently, 66,000 Rhode Islanders do not have access to primary care physicians or facilities, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Eisenhower Medical Center has received its accreditation to become a full-fledged teaching hospital and expects to begin training doctors in 2013 to help fill the Coachella Valley's longstanding primary care shortages. "One hundred and two primary care physicians are needed to to close the gap," said Dr. Roy Young, director of the new internal medicine residency program—one of two the Rancho Mirage hospital will offer. "That becomes the mission of our residency program—to train people to stay here," Young said. Teaching hospitals also raise the level of care in a region, since both faculty and students must keep up with the latest medical research and technology, said Dr. Glen Grayman, president of the board of the Health Assessment Resource Center. The group surveys healthcare needs in the valley. More doctors also will keep health care dollars in the valley, he said. "Each of their practices is an economic engine not only supporting their own staff but supporting the hospitals, supporting labs, supporting imaging centers and that money stays here," Grayman said. It'll cost $50 million to start the residency programs.