Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital is expecting a $200 million private donation, and now supporters hope to attract tens of millions more for the cash-strapped health center. The hospital's management restructuring and the prospect of better days ahead have boosted charitable funds for the institution. Hopes are high that the wave of giving will revive the hospital and allow the facility to replace outdated medical equipment, buy a modern computer system and even develop medical specialties to attract more paying patients.
New Jersey lawmakers are currently considering a plan that would provide health insurance for all state residents by 2011. In this Q and A with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Sen. Joseph Vitale, the Democratic Senate health chairman and is architect of the plan, answered some questions about the health insurance issue and specifics of the plan.
Cooper University Hospital is in the process of constructing a $222 million patient pavilion in downtown Camden, NJ. In addition to the new tower, which will feature new patient and operating rooms, a lobby and an emergency room addition, the hospital is also planning an $80 million cancer center, a $50 million biomedical research building, and a $140 million medical school building.
The American College of Surgeons' commission on cancer has granted three-year accreditation to Bristol (CT) Hospital's new cancer care center. Bristol Hospital has affiliated with the Yale-New Haven Cancer Network, which provides Bristol with access to clinical resources, clinical research and other support services from Yale-New Haven, the Yale School of Medicine and the Yale Cancer Center, said a Bristol Hospital spokesman.
B. Braun Medical Inc., a manufacturer of the blood thinner heparin, has initiated a nationwide recall because some products may contain a potentially dangerous contaminant. Contaminated heparin from a different manufacturer has been associated with 19 deaths and hundreds of allergic reactions.
If a person checks into a hospital and even mostly just lies in bed, they will generate, on average, 25 pounds of waste a day, according to Hospitals for a Healthy Environment. Some portion of that waste is safe, fully functioning and probably needed somewhere in the world. Now one woman is taking some of this waste off of New York hospitals' hands and getting it someplace where it is needed.
The long-running federal investigation into the orthopedic device industry's suspected kickback payments to hip and knee surgeons now has been focusing on the many doctors who receive money as the companies' paid consultants. Kickbacks might raise the overall cost of healthcare, and doctors can be convicted of violating Medicare's antifraud statutes simply for submitting a bill for a procedure linked to a kickback, whether or not the procedure was necessary.
Insurance companies are looking closely at advanced medical scans like CT scans due to spiraling costs and safety concerns. Health insurers are requiring more pre-authorizations before patients can receive these types of scans, and setting restrictions such as mandating that the imaging equipment and medical staff operating it be credentialed in advance. Some doctors also agree that emerging evidence shoes that the scans are being over-prescribed.
Employees and employers across the country are getting squeezed by the price of healthcare, and the struggle to control health costs is viewed as crucial to improving wages and living standards for working Americans. Because employers are paying more for healthcare and other benefits, it leaves less money for pay increases. Benefits now devour 30.2% of employers' compensation costs, with the remaining money going to wages, according to the Labor Department.
We all know healthcare wastes a lot of money--contributing to our sector's gobbling of ever-bigger pieces of the gross domestic product's pie each year. The problem of the rising cost of healthcare is blasted all over the Internet, newspapers and TV seemingly every day. Long-term, of course, it can't continue this way. Lots of smart people have been saying that for years.
I hosted a HealthLeaders Media Roundtable event here in Nashville last week. Roundtable is our name for an event where our editors bring some smart people to town to talk about a specific issue that's affecting healthcare--in most cases a specific challenge to a hospital, physician practice or health plan. My colleagues and I take turns occasionally putting one of these discussions together for later publication in HealthLeaders magazine.
This time, I had a group of three senior hospital executives in to talk about outpatient strategy in healthcare, a very narrow and very hot topic as hospitals seek to broaden their income streams. It'll be published in our June issue, and we had a great informative discussion that I think our readers will learn from. But no matter what the purported topic of the conversation at events like these, in the end we always end up talking about the cost of healthcare.
This time was no exception. Hospital leaders--at least the ones we most often talk to--don't have their heads buried in the sand on this issue. They're committed to bringing better value to their patients and lowering costs when it doesn't affect patient care. But I think sometimes we editors get a sense that healthcare's problems are more solvable than they are because we're always inviting innovators and high achievers for these discussions. I often come away with the feeling that if we have these kinds of people in place at our healing institutions, why do we have a problem? They're doing the right things. They're avoiding waste at all costs, trying to eke out their 4% to 5% margin each year. They're trying to put the best business practices in place while still trying to carry out their mission to care for those without the means to pay and subsidize their many money-losing operations with the few that happen to make money.
Healthcare spending is a big problem without an easy solution, but the clarion call from all quarters that something should be done to cut costs is growing louder.
There's lots of blame to go around for the unsustainable rate of healthcare cost inflation. Some blame doctors for ordering unnecessary tests and drugs. Some blame health plans for squeezing hospitals and physicians to the breaking point and distributing those profits to their shareholders. Many blame hospitals for doing more harm than good for patients in many situations. Some blame patients who don't seem to have any limits on the amount of healthcare they consume. They're not paying for it, they reason, so why should they limit consumption? And oh yeah, they're too fat and too consumed by their bad habits.
The truth is, all of us are to blame for not getting this situation under control. But it occurred to me the other day that the top-performing leaders in healthcare who are taking risks with innovative solutions to the problem of waste in healthcare don't get a lot of reward for their often herculean efforts. In the business world, the high performers are rewarded handsomely. In healthcare, they might get a few shekels for changing behavior, but the incentives definitely lag the risk badly, and in many cases, the rewards don't begin to pay for the outlays necessary to enhance efficiency. In fact, you can still do pretty well in healthcare regardless of how efficient you are. That's changing, but the pace of that change is glacial, while the steady march to higher costs seems like a raging torrent.
Editor's Note: Last Chance: We're nearing your last opportunity to enter HealthLeaders Media's Fifth Annual Top Leadership Teams contest. Give your leadership team an opportunity for recognition. The deadline for entries in March 27.
