Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is offering commissions of up to 20% to insurance agents who enroll consumers "with no major ongoing health conditions" in a new line of individual insurance plans. Agents who sell policies to "high-risk" consumers earn a commission of only 1 to 2%. The insurer's aim is to bring in younger and healthier members to balance the costs of covering sicker customers and to compensate insurance agents similar to other private insurers, according to the company.
Officials at St. Francis Hospital and Health Centers are eyeing the nation's economic situation as they put the brakes on further work on a multimillion-dollar construction project in Indianapolis. A $265 million, inpatient tower and emergency department expansion will be put on hold this summer if the economy doesn't improve, officials said.
After more than a decade of expansion, the Medical College of Wisconsin is grappling with smaller operating margins, a less profitable patient mix and excess research capacity at the school and its hospital partners. As a result, the school will cut its budget by 5% for the fiscal year beginning July 1, and layoffs are possible, college spokesman Richard Katschke confirmed. Medical schools across the country are experiencing similar problems, some of which are severe.
The best-case scenario for the government's plans to spend $19 billion on computerized medical records is seamless communication among doctors and patients, and far fewer mistakes. And the worst-case: $19 billion goes down the drain. The medical industry is hoping for the first outcome, even while some fear the second, as the Health and Human Services Department tries to get hundreds of thousands of doctors to quit using paper files and join the digital age.
The Sg2 orthopedics team surveyed 238 orthopedic surgeons on this question and a wide range of other issues, including the greatest professional pressures they face, current and planned practice expansion initiatives, physician-hospital relationships and practice marketing and promotion activities. Respondents represented a variety of practice sizes, structures and locations.
Economic concerns related to reimbursement from Medicare and private payers, overhead and expense management are by far these surgeons' top concerns.
The personal information of more than 200,000 visitors to Miami-based Jackson Memorial Hospital over an 11-month period was on a hard drive that has been stolen, the hospital announced. Copies of the drivers' licenses of visitors from May 2007 through March 2008 were on a work station hard drive that vanished from a data center. Hospital officials recommended that visitors during that period place a fraud alert with a credit bureau. No Social Security numbers or financial information was on the missing hard drive, said Dennis Proul, the hospital's chief information officer.
In the past, a doctor would have to dictate his notes, get them transcribed, enter the proper Medicare reimbursement codes for each procedure in the operation, and fill out mounds of paperwork in order to get reimbursed by an insurer. ProVation software, made by Minneapolis-based Wolters Kluwer Health's Clinical Solutions unit, allows hospitals to bill an insurer even before the patient leaves his room.
Even as this year's flu season winds down, doctors say the implications of the spread of drug-resistant flu strains could resonate in seasons to come. As a result, it could affect treatment and highlights the need for faster flu tests, new drugs, and global monitoring of flu viruses.
Over the last 15 years, the U.S. rate of foot amputations from complications of diabetes has soared, approaching 100,000 annually, according to studies and government statistics. Hundreds of health professionals internationally say that's simply too high—even accounting for the growing prevalence of the disease—and are trying to figure out what to do about it. They concluded a three-day meeting on diabetic feet Saturday in Los Angeles.
Mark McClellan, a major policy figure in healthcare during the Bush administration, is now is using his post at Washington's Brookings Institution to keep moving in the circle of implementers who want to "bend the curve" of rising healthcare costs. Along with several other healthcare experts, McClellan is trying to persuade President Barack Obama's reform team and Congress to pay hospitals and doctors more if they can show they're improving treatment for Medicare patients while lowering costs.
