Senate Democrats are increasingly receptive to using a controversial budget shortcut to ease passage of healthcare reform legislation, a shift in stance encouraged by the White House but denounced by Republicans. The procedure, known as reconciliation, is included in the House's budget blueprint but is not in the Senate version. The House reconciliation language would allow lawmakers to bundle into a single bill all facets of healthcare reform, combining the coverage initiatives that President Obama has advocated with the tax increases and spending cuts needed to offset the program's high costs. The rule also would protect the legislation from a Republican filibuster.
Public reporting of hospital death rates may be pushing Massachusetts cardiac specialists to treat some very sick heart patients less aggressively. The trend has sparked a debate among health officials and doctors over whether patients are being spared unnecessary and costly end-of-life treatment or denied procedures that might save their lives. The disagreement has intensified since state health officials recently flagged Massachusetts General Hospital and Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester for having higher-than-average death rates in heart patients receiving artery-opening stents.
At a time when much of the nation's economy is on life support, the giant health maintenance organization Kaiser Permanente has opened a state-of-the-art, $600-million hospital, a feat that illustrates the vitality of the healthcare sector and of Kaiser itself. Reformers in the U.S. and abroad are looking at Kaiser as a model of some of the biggest ideas in healthcare today—prevention and demonstrable quality care, such as high mammography rates and top cardiac surgery results. It's also priced less than most competitors.
With widespread job losses, more patients without insurance have sought care at Georgia-based Emory Healthcare hospitals. And in the past six months, with the stock market drop, Emory Healthcare's investments plunged by $50 million. While revenues from operations remained profitable over that time, the bottom-line loss was about $20 million, said John Fox, Emory Healthcare's CEO. To cut $30 million in costs, though, the organization went to its employees for feedback on management proposals, and to solicit their ideas. Hundreds of suggestions rolled in, and Emory says the responses have helped achieve the cost savings without layoffs.
Two UnitedHealth Group executives appeared before a Senate panel to discusss whether databases operated by a UnitedHealth unit had enabled various insurers to shortchange consumers systematically on reimbursements for using doctors outside the insurers' own networks. But with the insurance industry's future largely in the hands of lawmakers as Washington ponders health reform, the executives' testimony seemed to invite more scrutiny of industry practices.
Sunrise, FL-based Mednax said it has completed the purchase of two physician groups. Hampton Roads Neonatology includes three physicians and six nurse practitioners at Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News, VA. Schuster Heart Center, a pediatric cardiology practice in El Paso, TX, is a solo practice headed by Jeffrey D. Schuster.
The historic U.S. economic downturn has directly affected the healthcare industry, and mounting evidence confirms that demand for services is down across the board. One strategy is to steal market share: Go into your market aggressively and capture the volumes that still exist. Excellent idea. But how do you do it?
A longtime practitioner of yoga and meditation, fashion designer Donna Karan has contributed $850,000 to the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City to bring yoga therapy and a new kind of caregiving to the cancer wing. Karan believes the research attached to the one-year grant will show that hospital stays can be shortened and fewer anxiety drugs administered, which would save the patient and insurance companies money.
Big Nashville-based hospital chains should brace for stepped-up efforts to recruit their nurses if a series of mergers and agreements among some of the nation's largest healthcare workers' unions achieves organizers' goals. Nurse organizers expect that a larger organization with 150,000 members and the arrangement with the Service Employees International Union will provide a boost to organizing efforts at chains such as HCA. Recruiting nurses has been difficult in Southern states, including Tennessee, where laws don't allow for mandatory union membership at work.
Advocate Health Care, the Chicago area's largest provider of medical care with nine hospitals, has announced that there will be no merger with the parent of Rockford Memorial Hospital. Advocate and Rockford Health System agreed to let expire their letter of intent to explore a merger.
