The Obama administration said Tuesday that it had shelved plans for a survey in which "mystery shoppers" posing as patients would call doctors' offices to see how difficult it was to get appointments. "We have determined that now is not the time to move forward with this research project," the Department of Health and Human Services said late Tuesday. The decision, after criticism from doctors and politicians, represents an abrupt turnabout. On Sunday night, officials at the health department and the White House staunchly defended the survey as a way to measure access to primary care, and insisted that it posed no threat to privacy. Health policy experts have long expressed concern about a shortage of primary care doctors, including family physicians and internists. The shortage, they say, could become more serious if, as President Obama hopes, more than 30 million people gain insurance coverage under the health care law passed last year.
In an extraordinary move, a group of spine specialists are publicly repudiating the research of other experts that has backed the widespread use of a Medtronic bone growth product. In a series of reports published in a medical journal on Tuesday, the specialists called the research misleading and biased. The repudiation, appearing in a full issue of The Spine Journal devoted to the topic, represents a watershed in the long-running debate over conflicts of interest for the sponsorship of scientific studies by makers of drugs and medical devices. It is extremely rare for researchers to publicly chastise colleagues, and editors of leading medical journals said they could not recall an instance in which a publication had dedicated an entire issue for such a singular purpose. Medtronic, the nation's biggest maker of medical devices, has been facing intensifying scrutiny over its promotion of Infuse, the bone growth product at the center of the controversy. The bioengineered material is used primarily in spinal fusions, a procedure in which spinal vertebrae are joined to reduce back pain. Infuse is used in about a quarter of the estimated 432,000 spinal fusions performed in this country each year. The articles published on Tuesday charge that researchers with financial ties to Medtronic overstated Infuse's benefits and vastly understated its risks by claiming there were none. "It harms patients to have biased and corrupted research published," five doctors wrote in a joint editorial that accompanied the reports. "It harms patients to have unaccountable special interests permeate medical research."
Leading Congressional Democrats immediately recoiled Tuesday from a new proposal to cut $600 billion in Medicare spending over the next decade -- in part by raising the eligibility age. Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-CT) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) unveiled the proposal as part of a bipartisan effort to produce the kind of savings necessary to achieve the $2 trillion in debt reduction both parties say is needed to convince reticent lawmakers to vote to raise the debt ceiling. It would raise Medicare?s eligibility age from 65 to 67 and assess higher premiums on wealthier seniors. The proposal echoes Republican demands that entitlement reform -- especially deep cuts in Medicare spending -- be a part of any agreement to raise the nation?s debt ceiling. But the swift rejection of the proposal among Democrats reflects the significant obstacles that remain to any agreement to cut the deficit and raise the nation?s legal borrowing limit. Positions on both sides have been hardening in recent days, as an Aug. 2 deadline for working out a deal before the nation defaults on its obligations approaches.
Support is building among some Massachusetts hospitals for temporary government limits on healthcare prices, a remarkable development in an industry that has long favored letting the marketplace determine how much providers are paid for treating patients. During a second day of hearings on healthcare costs yesterday, three of four hospital chiefs who testified said government controls on prices are needed to close the wide gap between what insurers pay hospitals and doctors? groups with the market leverage to demand high prices and what they pay to those without it. "Fundamentally, I believe in the market," said Andrei Soran, CEO of MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham. But "the market got out of hand," he said. "Intervention will bring it back to the appropriate level." Norman Deschene, president of Lowell General Hospital, said his hospital is losing doctors because they can see a patient and make "$100 today with Lowell General" and then sign on with a better-paid competitor and make "$150 tomorrow for the same work."
Without its acquisition by Highmark Inc., West Penn Allegheny Health System would have been forced to shutter West Penn Hospital by this fall, the chairman of the health system's board of directors said today. "We have been starved for capital," David L. McClenahan, chairman of the West Penn Allegheny board of directors, said at a press conference. The emergency room and 250 of the inpatient beds at West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh's Bloomfield section were eliminated Jan. 1 as part of a consolidation. Highmark announced Tuesday it is acquiring West Penn Allegheny, the region's second largest health system, and immediately providing a $50 million grant to keep West Penn open and pay for capital improvements at the aging facility. The state's largest insurer will spend a total commitment of $475 million over four years to acquire the health care system as a subsidiary, including $75 million for scholarships to go to medical schools affiliated with West Penn Allegheny.
Evaluating hospital networks, data, drivers and device types should be completed before embarking on an interoperability strategy, said Bridget A. Moorman of BMoorman Consulting at the Association for the Advancement of the Medical Instrumentation conference & expo, June 25. Despite the lack of a clear and specific meaningful use definition of "interoperability," Moorman said the expected American Reinvestment and Recovery Act's stage 1 date for device interoperability is 2015. Identified in the legislation, hospitals must be able to electronically chart three vital signs, Moorman said: blood pressure, height and weight. Interestingly, the law does not specify that that information must be integrated electronically, therefore, it could even be typed into a computer, she said. While there is money tied to the MU legislation, she noted that the vague wording may be with regard to definitions and standards. "Stage 1 incentivizes clinicians to purchase EMRs," she said. "Even though there was a lot of background work to create the MU requirements, they, unfortunately, did not specify data standards. While you?re not required to have a fully electronic organization under those standards, MU might present an opportunity to begin your device integration journey."