The Illinois Attorney General's office filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing the owner and manager of Heart Check America, a medical imaging company, of pressuring patients into purchasing pricey body scans that many did not need. Last month, ProPublica published an investigation of Heart Check America, describing its marketing and sales techniques. In our story, medical experts called the company's tactics unethical and said its scans were inappropriate for many patients, exposing them to unnecessary expense and treatment. Health regulators in Colorado and Nevada have cited the company for performing medical scans without doctors' orders. Now Illinois officials say Sheila Haddad and her son, David Haddad, the owner and manager of the company, used "unfair and deceptive business practices" to manipulate consumers, possibly numbering in the thousands, into 10-year screening contracts costing up to $7,000, plus additional annual dues.
Franciscan St. Francis Health on Thursday defended its commitment to provide needy patients with financial assistance, one day after a report slammed its charity care practice. The Hospital Accountability Project, a joint effort of the Citizens Action Coalition Education Fund and Indiana Legal Services, said all four Marion County nonprofit hospitals need to do more to make patients aware of their charity care provisions. But the project strongly criticized St. Francis Health, calling upon the state attorney general to launch an investigation. In a statement released Thursday, St. Francis expressed confidence in its financial assistance programs and said it hopes to meet with the report's authors. The hospital makes information about its financial assistance program available on patients' bills and its website, and has financial counselors available to help patients with questions.
When Express Scripts Inc. got blindsided this week by the nation's largest drugstore chain, Walgreen Co. —which publicly threatened to end their multibillion-dollar relationship — the episode marked an epic clash in the pharmaceutical industry. Walgreen officials, in announcing they had canceled contract negotiations with the St. Louis-based pharmacy benefit manager, pronounced themselves 'surprised" that Express Scripts had the temerity to drive such a hard bargain with "the largest retail provider in their pharmacy network." The reaction from Express Scripts? Whatever— customers can just take their Express Scripts benefit cards to competitors literally down the block. "On average, another pharmacy within the Express Scripts network is within one-half mile of a Walgreens pharmacy," taunted a company release, while careful to also emphasize an interest in continuing talks. Wall Street responded by driving down Walgreen stock — while Express Scripts' shares inched up, apparently unaffected.
The county-owned MetroHealth System, facing scrutiny from Cuyahoga County leaders, is using a crisis communications firm to help manage the hospital's image and respond to questioning. That has prompted some county leaders to ask why such a move is necessary and whether it's a wise use of money. Hennes Paynter Communications, which the health system has hired on an as-needed basis since 2008 when two of its employees were implicated in the countywide corruption investigation, has been asked to "work on messaging," according to invoices The Plain Dealer obtained through a public-records request. The firm, at the cost of $300 an hour, sat with MetroHealth's leaders as they practiced and prepared for last month's public meeting with Cuyahoga County's new health and human services committee, according to Hennes Paynter partner and co-owner Barbara Paynter and MetroHealth Board Chairman Ron Fountain.
Whether you're a chief medical officer at a large hospital or a solo practitioner, there are plenty of opportunities popping up for non-techies to learn everything they need to know about health IT. Since many of these professionals don't need to learn all the nitty-gritty technical details about electronic health records to understand how the systems will impact their organizations, some training and professional organizations are now focusing their attention on the fundamentals. Most non-technical clinical leaders, administrators, and practice managers aren't responsible for rolling out or supporting the systems, but need to understand why they're being implemented. That includes learning about the challenges to expect--disruptive workflow changes, for example--when their organizations roll out EHRs, as well as the benefits of successful implementations, such as the ability to detect a wrong prescription for an allergic patient before it's written.
Inova Alexandria Hospital emergency department clinicians in Alexandria, VA can now quickly access a patient's prescription information, no matter where in the country they were written, thanks to a recently launched initiative by the Northern Virginia Regional Health Information Organization.The new service helps providers working with patients in the ED to retrieve and access patient prescription medication information from data sources across the country. Until now, achieving multi-system interoperability using data from disparate sources and seamless workflow integration into an electronic health record was not possible, officials said. The pilot provides a foundation for extending to a full information exchange through the use of Continuity of Care Documents and is a step toward meaningful use of electronic health records and health information technology.