As part of an ongoing restructuring, SSM HealthCare-St. Louis has dismissed 75 members of its management team, including all hospital chief operating officers and vice presidents. After taking over in 2007, Chief Executive Jim Sanger reorganized the hospital system into north and south geographic regions and by areas of patient care. During the reorganization, system leaders realized the hospitals needed more consistent practices to improve patient care and efficiency. SSM hopes eliminating most top management positions at individual hospitals will reduce redundancy and help the transition, and Sanger thinks fewer people making decisions will lead to more consistent decision-making.
An increasing number of hospitals are opening up their own medical spas that offer medical beauty procedures, from Botox and Restylane to laser hair removal. As the number of medical spas have multiplied, so have concerns about the quality of services they offer and the level of medical supervision present. The hospitals see themselves as a natural alternative, and hope people will automatically associate their names with higher-quality medicine.
Richard Scrushy testified for six hours during a deposition and will return for questioning by attorneys who say the former HealthSouth chief executive swindled their clients. In 2005, Scrushy, a co-founder of the physical therapy chain, was found not guilty in Birmingham's federal court of committing fraud at HealthSouth. Five former chief financial officers pleaded guilty to similar charges and fingered their former boss in the $2.7 billion fraud. Scrushy is about one year into an 82-month federal prison term levied after a Montgomery-based federal jury in 2006 found him guilty of bribing former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. A federal judge ordered him brought to Birmingham to answer questions in a civil lawsuit filed by HealthSouth shareholders seeking at least $1 billion.
The Joint Commission has announced the 2009 National Patient Safety Goals and related requirements for each of its accreditation programs and its Disease-Specific Care Certification Program. The National Patient Safety Goals promote specific improvements in patient safety by providing healthcare organizations with proven solutions to persistent patient safety problems, according to a Joint Commission release. The goals apply to the more than 15,000 Joint Commission-accredited and -certified healthcare organizations and programs.
A $2.1 million urgent-care center is being built in Lee's Summit, MO. Emergent Care Plus will be the first venture of an emergency practice formed last year by physicians four physicians, and the 7,000-square-foot stand-alone facility is expected to open in October. Patients will not have to make appointments but can go online to alert staff members that they are on the way. Patients also will be able to fill out personal and insurance information electronically before arriving at the facility.
More than 80,000 Americans traveled abroad in the past year for heart surgeries, hip replacements, and other medical treatments, a growing trend prompted by the rising cost of healthcare in the U.S. Many medical tourists are uninsured or have policies that have big co-payments or won't cover certain treatments, while some travelers have high-deductible insurance policies paired with a health savings account, which can be used tax-free to pay for many overseas medical procedures.
As the healthcare industry shifts from a wholesale to a retail model, a new market of consumers is demanding clearer information and personalized support as they face decisions regarding their healthcare. According to a recent study by McKinsey Quarterly, consumers are concerned, confused, unprepared, and uncertain about health insurance and financing needs, leading them to rely heavily on personal recommendations and brand recognition.
The American Medical Association for the first time has adopted guiding principles on medical tourism, taking such action because it's unclear whether the risks of medical tourism outweigh the benefits. While the nine principles are largely meant to educate patients, employers, and insurers, adoption of them can influence the association's advocacy efforts.
A new report by the eHealth Initiative lays out, in painstaking detail, the current state of affairs in electronic prescribing. At first glance, the numbers suggest real progress.
For example, the report notes that in 2004, little electronic prescribing took place. By the end of 2007, some 35,000 prescribers were actively dispatching their medication orders straight to pharmacies. In that same year, some 35 million prescription transactions were sent over a nationwide network known as the Pharmacy Health Information Exchange, operated by SureScripts. In other words, in a little over three years, the industry has gone from virtually no electronic prescriptions to tens of millions of them.
The catch, of course, is that, high numbers aside, the proportion of overall prescriptions sent electronically is tiny. "The adoption level at the end of 2007 represented approximately 2% of the potential for electronic prescribing," the report notes.
We are indeed a medication-happy society, consuming 3.52 billion prescriptions annually! So in the big picture, adoption of e-prescribing remains low. Massachusetts leads the way, with 13% of prescriptions in this highly "wired" state sent electronically. My home state, Illinois, is far down the list, ranked at 28th with just over 1% of medication orders sent via electronic networks. I'm sure not helping boost those numbers myself.
Last week, I dutifully toted my antibiotic prescription across town from my physician to the drugstore. It's not a long walk, and his handwriting is fairly legible, but to me the missing piece here is compliance. My physician has absolutely no way to know if I fulfilled the prescription.
This scenario plays out time and time again. North Dakota ranks dead last, with a mere .09% of prescriptions transmitted electronically. How many actual prescriptions does that work out to? Perhaps there is some solo physician up there who practices medicine part-time and who uses an EMR a few times a week.
I don't know which astounds me more—the sheer quantity of drugs that we Americans consume, or the continued reliance on paper-based prescription orders to facilitate the transactions. Even if you take out controlled substances (which face legal restrictions on electronic orders), the number of prescriptions being toted by hand by consumers to their local pharmacy is huge. Yet, this report lays out some compelling reasons why physicians have not adopted this technology, including cost, workflow, and data standards. This is a thorny issue indeed, and the eHealth Initiative (and its partner, the Center for Improving Medication Management) deserve kudos for compiling such an exhaustive analysis.
Gary Baldwin is technology editor of HealthLeaders magazine. He can be reached at gbaldwin@healthleadersmedia.com.
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Michigan-based American Community Mutual Insurance Co., which in 2007 formed a new subsidiary called Precedent Insurance to market exclusively online in Texas, has abandoned that effort and switched to using agents. The online-only sales approach didn't work so well, and the company has ceased using the technology it had licensed from a California business software developer, said a spokesman. American Community is now using agents to sell the same individual coverage in Texas and nine other states.
