Rick Breon and Mike Freed, CEO and CFO, respectively, of Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI, were on the finance panel at HealthLeaders Media's Top Leadership Teams event last fall. In addition to hospitals, Spectrum also owns a 500,000-member health plan, which, as Freed and Breon explain, is useful in helping hold down healthcare prices in their region, keeping it attractive for business investment in the area. The 2008 Top Leadership Teams event is scheduled for Oct. 15-16, 2008 in Chicago.
Each year, thousands of Californians find themselves at odds with their health insurers over whether they should get the treatment their doctors prescribed. Health insurers "are going back to the old strategies of the '90s, when they interrupted care on the front end by denying or delaying treatment offered by a doctor," said Jerry Flanagan, health advocate for Consumer Watchdog. But now patients have a number of resources to turn to if they believe they received an unfair denial.
Online second-opinion services offer patients consultations from specialists based on the medical records that they fax, mail or send via the Internet. The average cost is $500 to $1,500, depending on the number of radiology or pathology interpretations required. Patients then receive online access to a second opinion in about two weeks. One company that offers the service is Partners Online Specialty Consultations. Since POSC went online in 2001, about 10,000 patients have taken advantage of the service.
Fulton County, GA's public subsidy for ambulance service ends soon, and ambulances could be slower to respond to emergencies as a result. Physicians and hospital administrators say that the cutbacks could endanger lives or cause permanent harm to some patients, and now officials say that they haven't given up on finding some additional sources of income.
Rural Tioga County sprawls across more than 1,100 square miles along the New York border in the north-central section of Pennsylvania. It suffers from high unemployment, low income and high rates of chronic disease. It also has far fewer employers than do most urban sections of the state, and most businesses are too small to offer health insurance to their employees. As a result Tioga has a higher percentage of uninsured (35.6%) residents than any other county in the state.
In Bucks County, PA, there is emergency department construction and renovation. New outpatient facilities are opening, and there are expanded clinics, and renovated laboratories. A new hospital building is also in the planning stages. The boom is being fueled by demographic shifts, technological advances, competition, and an evolution of care that makes changes necessary.
According to data released by the Delaware Valley Healthcare Council of the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia's five Level 1 adult and pediatric trauma centers collectively lose an estimated $8 million annually in caring for victims of violence who cannot pay for healthcare. In 2004, for example, 786 Philadelphians were hospitalized for gunshot wounds. About 13% of those victims had no insurance at all, and a little over a third had Medical Assistance coverage. Medical Assistance reimburses the hospitals about 85% of the cost of care, but the hospitals must absorb the remaining 15%.
New American Medical Association president Nancy Nielsen, MD, vowed at the organization's annual meeting to use "all of the power" of her presidency and the clout of the AMA "to let the nation know that we must cover America's uninsured." Nielsen is only the second woman to become president of the 161-year-old AMA. She also has worked as a medical educator and health insurance executive.
A mobile emergency room that arrives on a tractor trailer and can be set up within 30 minutes will open for business next to Columbus, IN's flood-damaged hospital. The Carolinas MED-1 unit will provide intensive care beds, operating rooms and other resources so hospital staff can resume treating patients. Columbus Regional Hospital has been closed since it was flooded June 7, causing damage estimated at more than $125 million.
Private health consultants are trying to fill a gap in healthcare created by overworked primary care doctors who have less time to coordinate patient care. Consultants, many of whom are registered nurses, social workers, or physicians, help clients find specialists and also will make calls to ensure that a patient's various doctors are communicating with each other. The trend also caters to the desire of a growing number of patients to take charge of their healthcare.
