The Marin Healthcare District said that Sutter Health, which operates Greenbrae, CA-based Marin General Hospital for the public district on a long-term lease, transferred $49 million in funds from the hospital to the system's Sacramento headquarters in 2008. District officials said Sutter disclosed the 2008 transfers during a meeting of the Corte Madera-based district's Lease and Building Committee, including $25 million in cash transfers and another $24 million transferred to bolster funding of Sutter's under-funded pension fund.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has released the proposed 2010 rules for the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System, and the Ambulatory Surgery Center Payment System. The technical component of imaging reimbursement is yet again a prime target for legislators, says Sg2 Vice President Henry Soch, and here Sg2 provides a preview of what might be in store for imaging in 2010.
Harford, CT-based Aetna is introducing new health plans for small employers in some states that charge no co-pays for preventive care such as routine physicals, vision and gynecological exams, and well-child visits. Aetna says it's pricing the new zero co-pay plans the same or nearly the same as what the existing plans would have cost. But the catch is the higher co-pays or deductibles on certain other benefits could offset at least part of the savings for some members.
Senate Democratic leaders appeared open to establishing a non-government cooperative as part of a U.S. healthcare overhaul.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Charles Schumer said they were amenable to considering a cooperative to compete with private insurers as part of the effort to reduce the country's healthcare costs and expand coverage to uninsured Americans.
Twenty people were arrested in a $4.6-million Medi-Cal fraud scheme that law enforcement officials allege used unlicensed individuals to provide in-home nursing care for disabled patients. About 75 patients, many of them children with cerebral palsy or developmental disabilities, were treated at home or at school by the unlicensed individuals who stole identities to pose as licensed nurses, according to the United States Attorney's office.
New York Times columnist Pauline M. Chen says that while the discussions at disciplinary meetings and at morbidity and mortality conferences tend to focus on the effects of these physicians' errors on patients, there is rarely any time devoted to how such errors affect doctors and their subsequent interactions with patients. Doctors who are depressed are as much as two times more likely to make subsequent errors than doctors who are not, Chen says.