Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue is backing legislation that will give state residents a tax break for the premiums they pay on high-deductible health insurance plans. The proposal also would eliminate a premium tax paid on such policies and give small businesses tax credits for enrolling employees in high-deductible plans. And it would allow consumers who buy such plans to get rebates from insurers for "behavior modifications," such as quitting smoking or lowering their blood pressure.
Children's Healthcare of Atlanta is announcing today that it has raised $294 million in its five-year campaign to pay for the largest healthcare facility expansion and renovation ever in Georgia. When first envisioned, the campaign goal was $200 million. Then Children's agreed to take over responsibility for Grady Hospital's Hughes Spalding center, raising the goal to $230 million. That goal was raised again in July 2006 to $265 million.
In this era of rampant obesity, it's tough for those who love each other to talk frankly about weight. Imagine how hard it can be for near strangers such as doctors to point out the obvious. Study after study shows that doctors often don't tell their patients that they need to lose weight. They also struggle to find the right words to convey concern without blame.
Tennessee state officials have announced moderate expansion of the CoverTN program, initially created in an attempt to make healthcare coverage more accessible to people who live on limited income working for small businesses. The CoverTN plan started with eligibility requirements that applied to businesses with only 25 or fewer employees and that half of those employees had to make less than $41,000. Those standards have been expanded and is now open to businesses with up to 50 employees and half of those employees must make less than $43,000 a year. People must work an average of at least 20 hours a week at the job and have not had health coverage stopped in the last six months.
Fitch Ratings on Wednesday downgraded UnitedHealth Group Inc. default rating to 'A' from 'A+' and lowered the outstanding senior unsecured debt rating to 'A-' from 'A', all of which are upper medium grade ratings. Fitch cited a review showing the healthcare services company will be more leveraged than previously anticipated, and said the rating changes take into account the possible $1.3 billion in fines UnitedHealth is facing for alleged state law violations in California.
In an ambitious effort to shore up U.S. primary-care medicine, a coalition including General Electric Co., International Business Machines Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. is launching an initiative to pay doctors hefty bonuses for creating "medical homes" for patients. The initiative is the latest and perhaps most far-reaching effort by Bridges to Excellence, a program backed by big employers and health plans to provide physicians with financial incentives for taking better care of patients. Last year, the program paid out roughly $10 million in bonuses to doctors in the 18 states where it is active.
A contaminated anticancer drug made by one of China's largest pharmaceutical companies underscores how quality-control problems continue to plague the Chinese drug industry. There is no sign the tainted leukemia drug was exported. But the case provides a cautionary tale as Western pharmaceutical companies start outsourcing some manufacturing to China.
The demise of California's attempt at comprehensive healthcare reform this week means that advocates of overhauling the healthcare system will turn their focus back to Washington as an increasingly tough budget climate raises new questions about whether states can go it alone.
For Americans who listened to President George W. Bush give his final State of the Union speech Monday night, it was the same old story when it comes to healthcare.
Our president told us he wants to see more affordable and accessible healthcare, tax breaks for those without health insurance and an end to junk medical lawsuits. Nothing new there. The president has touted these changes in each of his annual addresses since he first took office in 2001. Hearing the same things year after year, it's easy to believe that the president has achieved little in healthcare during his seven years in office.
That isn't to say that things are just as they were in 2001. The cost of healthcare continues to skyrocket. Frivolous medical malpractice suits continue. Emergency rooms are overburdened. The number of uninsured Americans continues to grow. Hospitals continue to make high profile errors, putting patient lives at risk.
Perhaps the thing that President Bush has made the most progress on is something that he didn't specifically mention during Monday's address: Electronic medical records. First mentioned in his 2004 State of the Union speech, President Bush put forth an effort to have electronic records available to most health consumers by 2014 to improve the quality of healthcare that Americans receive. His idea was to make sure that no matter where a patient sought care, caregivers would have complete access to the patient's medical history and information. Doctors would know what medications the patients were taking, what they were allergic to, and what ailments they've experienced before. There would be no more duplicate tests, no medication interactions, no allergic reactions. Preventing these three things alone could not only make patient care better, but save hospitals and insurance companies money in the long run.
So where are we on this effort? In 2006, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services put out a report about the Health Information Technology Initiative, outlining its progress on gathering information and creating uniform standards for electronic record use. The first national coordinator for health IT, an advisor to the secretary of HHS, was appointed to give advice on the actions needed to make electronic records a reality. Committees were formed to examine health IT products, security, anti-fraud activities, standardized adoption methods, best practice guidelines and more. One of these committees, the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology, certified 37 electronic health record products for use in clinician offices in 2006.
Despite these efforts, though, Congress hasn't passed health IT legislation during the last two years and funding has been scant. A report released January 18 by the California HealthCare Foundation questions the effectiveness of the Nationwide Health Information Network initiative. CHF calls the goal "worthy," but "impractical" and says it "cannot be implemented."
CHF makes sure to point out that it believes the president's goal of health IT adoption by 2014 is still possible, and has been successful in laying the foundation for health IT and electronic health record adoption. "Yet, it cannot be said that the nation is substantially closer to a ubiquitous, interconnected, interoperable HIT system now than when the president called for action in April 2004," the report says.
So, what do you, a Quality Leader, think? Are we any closer to having electronic health records connect our doctors' offices, hospitals and clinics? Will we see a day where we'll know everything about a patient's medical history the second they walk in the door? If we do, will it improve the quality of American healthcare, as the president proclaimed during his 2004 speech? Will these efforts be interrupted by the change in power that our country will see this time next year?
It remains to be seen who will lead us to the year 2014, or the commitment that leader will have to seeing the health IT initiative through. I'm interested to hear what you think about our health IT progress and whether technology is truly the solution to improving quality and solving America's healthcare problems.
The hospital-specific HCAHPS reports posted at QualityNet Exchange for preview contain an error in four of the composite scores. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a mathematical error dramatically reduces the proportion of patients who rate hospitals as "always" doing the right thing and inflates the proportion who rate hospitals as "usually" doing the right thing. The error affects composite scores 3-6, which deal with responsiveness of staff, pain management, communication about medications and discharge information.
