The American College of Radiology today downplayed concerns that full body scanners at security checkpoints in U.S. airports would pose a health risk.
In the wake of a thwarted Christmas Day bombing attempt on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in the skies over Detroit, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that it is ramping up the deployment and use of the scanners, which produce anatomically accurate images of the body and can detect objects and substances concealed by clothing.
TSA has deployed two types of scanning systems: Millimeter wave technology uses low-level radio waves in the millimeter wave spectrum. Two rotating antennae cover the passenger from head to toe with low-level RF energy. Backscatter technology uses extremely weak X-rays delivering less than 10 microRem of radiation per scan—the radiation equivalent one receives inside an aircraft flying for two minutes at 30,000 feet.
"The ACR is not aware of any evidence that either of the scanning technologies that the TSA is considering would present significant biological effects for passengers screened," ACR said in a media release.
"An airline passenger flying cross-country is exposed to more radiation from the flight than from screening by one of these devices," ACR said. "The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement has reported that a traveler would need to experience 2,500 backscatter scans per year to reach what they classify as a negligible individual dose. The American College of Radiology agrees with this conclusion."
AdvancedMD Software, Inc., a software-as-a-service medical practice and revenue cycle management provider, announced today that it has acquired PracticeOne, a private, CCHIT-certified, electronic health records software provider for physician practices. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
AdvancedMD, based in Salt Lake City, said the acquisition of PracticeOne will allow it to expand its product line to include a SaaS-based electronic health records, integrating the clinical and financial functions of a practice to boost profitability, productivity, and improved claims processing, and patient safety and satisfaction.
The new product line also includes a patient portal, and mobile access to provide secure access to patient information and medical decisions via smartphones.
PracticeOne has headquartered in Richland, WA and Canoga Park, CA.
A new report released today shows that the growth of overall online job listings in most employment sectors ended 2009 on a positive note in December, with demand for healthcare practitioners, technicians, and support personnel leading the rally.
The Conference Board's Help Wanted Online Data Series, which tracks more than 1,000 online job boards across the United States, found that advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners and technical occupations, the largest category by volume, also posted the largest December gain, with 45,100 new online listings, for a total of 541,400 online listings.
The sector had 497,400 online job vacancy listings in November, and 533,300 in October. Job demand was up in a wide variety of these healthcare occupations, including registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Demand for lower-paying healthcare support occupations rose by 9,200 listings in December—to 111,900, the report showed.
Because healthcare is such a broad field, the report noted that the demand for labor varies substantially from the highly specialized, highly skilled, and higher-paying practitioner and technical jobs to the lower-paying support occupations.
"In November, the last month for which unemployment data are available, advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners or technical occupations outnumbered the unemployed looking for work in this field by almost three to one, and the average wage in these occupations is $32.64/hour. In sharp contrast, the average wage for healthcare support occupations is $12.66/hour and there were almost three unemployed looking for work in the field for every advertised vacancy," the report noted.
For all industries, online job demand grew by 255,000 advertised vacancies in December, the report added.
"Employers' modest increase in demand for labor in the second half of 2009 is a nice way to end what has been a very challenging year," said Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board. "The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is still very high, but the recent six months indicate that things are slowly moving in the right direction. The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is about 12 million, with 4.5 unemployed for every online advertised vacancy."
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which will release its employment statistics for December and all of 2009 on Friday, has shown that the healthcare sector is one of the few areas in the economy that has seen monthly job growth throughout the recession, although that growth has slowed considerably in 2009.
University HealthSystem Consortium has formed a strategic partnership with Executive Health Resources, Inc., that will make the medical management company's Physician Advisor compliance, consulting, and auditing programs available to all UHC members.
"This strategic partnership with EHR will offer UHC members not only specialized pricing, but also services that include customized improvement insights," said Tom Robertson, vice president, business strategies and tactics, UHC. "In essence, members will receive the added benefit of a specific plan for concurrent medical necessity compliance and denials management."
Under the agreement announced today, Oak Brook, IL-based UHC's 107 academic medical centers and 220 affiliate hospitals can use EHR's programs, which include Concurrent Medicare Medical Necessity Compliance, Medicaid Medical Necessity Compliance, Retrospective Governmental Payor Appeals Solutions (including Comprehensive RAC, MAC, MIC, and QIO denial management), Managed Care/Commercial Payor Appeals, and Expert Advisory Services.
UHC and EHR will also analyze hospitals' member-level data to identify areas for improvement and customize plans for medical necessity compliance and denials management services. EHR will provide on-site implementation programs to educate case management staff on using EHR services.
Newtown Square, PA-based EHR, which works with more than 900 hospitals and health systems across the nation, said its Physician Advisors have successfully performed more than 1.2 million medical necessity reviews, conducted hundreds of audits at hospitals, and identified and reversed thousands of RAC medical necessity denials at all levels of appeal.
Healthcare spending in the United States grew 4.4% in 2008, to $2.3 trillion or $7,681 per person, the slowest rate of growth since the federal government started officially tracking expenditures in 1960, CMS reported this week.
Even with the slower growth, however, healthcare spending continued to outpace overall economic growth, which grew by 2.6% in 2008 as measured by the Gross Domestic Product. The findings are included in a report by CMS' Office of the Actuary.
"This report contains some welcome news and yet another warning sign," said Jonathan Blum, director of CMS' Center for Medicare Management. "Healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP is rising at an unsustainable rate. It is clear that we need health insurance reform now."
The 4.4% growth in 2008 was down from 6% in 2007 as spending slowed for nearly all healthcare goods and services, particularly for hospitals, CMS said.
Healthcare spending as a share of the nation's GDP continued to climb, reaching 16.2% in 2008, up 0.3% from 2007. Larger increases in the health spending share of GDP generally occur during or just after recessions, CMS said.
The recession significantly impacted health spending as more broke or jobless Americans went without care. This led to slower growth in personal healthcare paid by private sources, which increased only 2.8% in 2008. The recession also made it difficult for many Americans to afford private health insurance, so the growth in private health insurance benefit spending slowed to 3.9% in 2008, CMS said.
Health spending was also impacted by the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which provided a temporary 27-month increase in Federal Medical Assistance Percentages used to determine the federal Medicaid payments to states. The legislation shifted about $7 billion of Medicaid spending from states to the federal government for the last quarter of 2008, CMS said.
Other statistics on the growth of healthcare spending in the new report include:
Hospital spending in 2008 grew 4.5% to $718.4 billion, compared to 5.9% in 2007, the slowest rate of increase since 1998.
Physician and clinical services' spending increased 5% in 2008, a deceleration from 5.8% in 2007.
Retail prescription drug spending growth also decelerated to 3.2% in 2008 as per capita use of prescription medications declined slightly, mainly due to impacts of the recession, a low number of new product introductions, and safety and efficacy concerns.
Spending growth for both nursing home and home health services decelerated in 2008. For nursing homes, spending grew 4.6% in 2008 compared to 5.8% in 2007.
Total healthcare spending by public programs, such as Medicare/Medicaid, grew 6.5% in 2008, the same rate as in 2007.
Healthcare spending by private sources of funds grew only 2.6% in 2008 compared to 5.6% in 2007.
Private health insurance premiums grew 3.1% in 2008, a deceleration from 4.4% in 2007.
CMS has launched its fifth annual healthcare provider satisfaction survey of the Medicare fee-for-service contractors that process and pay more than $370 billion in Medicare claims each year.
The Medicare Contractor Provider Satisfaction Survey offers Medicare FFS providers an opportunity to give CMS feedback on their satisfaction, attitudes, perceptions, and opinions about the services provided by their respective contractor. Survey questions focus on seven business functions of the provider-contractor relationship:
Provider inquiries
Provider outreach and education
Claims processing
Appeals
Provider enrollment
Medical review
Provider audit and reimbursement
CMS is sending the 2010 survey to approximately 30,000 randomly selected providers, including physicians and other healthcare practitioners, suppliers, and institutional facilities that serve Medicare beneficiaries across the country. Those healthcare providers selected to participate in this year's confidential survey will be notified starting this month. Selected providers can access and complete the survey on the Internet via a secure Web site, or via snail mail, fax, and over the telephone.
CMS will analyze the 2010 MCPSS data and release a summary report on the CMS Web site this summer.
The MCPSS was created under the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, which mandated CMS to develop contract performance requirements, including measuring healthcare provider satisfaction with Medicare contractors.
The $403 million All Children's Hospital complex in St. Petersburg, FL, will open on Saturday morning, the culmination of a major construction project that began in May 2005.
The 10-story, pediatric specialty hospital, located two blocks from the old hospital, is the central focus of the complex, which also includes a seven-story outpatient care center, a 700-space parking garage, and a central energy plant designed to keep the hospital fully functional for up to three weeks during a disaster or power interruption.
The move to the new hospital will start at about 6 a.m. on Saturday, when All Children's care teams will transport the hospitalized youngsters and their parents to the new facility.
The new hospital and outpatient care center will provide nearly one million square feet of space devoted to pediatric healthcare. Virtually all of the hospital's 259 licensed beds will be in individual rooms.
The third floor of the new All Children's has been leased to Bayfront Medical Center, which will operate its labor & delivery suites and a well-baby nursery under the name Bayfront Baby Place.
Other key features of the new hospital include the 97-bed All Children's Hospital Guild Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Occupying an entire floor of the new hospital, the NICU is one of the largest in the southeastern United States. It was made possible by a $4-million gift from the hospital's nine Guild branches across Florida's Suncoast.
The Walmart & Sam's Club Emergency Center, which is on the hospital's first floor, more than triples the size of All Children's existing pediatric emergency center. It was made possible by a $5 million pledge from 10,000 Walmart, Sam's Club, Super Center, and Distribution Center employees in west central Florida.
The Vinny Lecavalier Pediatric Cancer & Blood Disorders Center will occupy half of the hospital's seventh floor. Designed with a positive pressure environmental system, the center will allow patients whose immune systems are compromised by disease, treatment or transplant to avoid isolation in their rooms. A dedicated playroom for these patients—one of four in the hospital overall—is located within the Center. The center was made possible through a $3 million pledge from Lecavalier, who is captain of the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning.
The new hospital will also feature a rooftop helistop for med-evac helicopters transporting critically ill children. The helipad is designed to bear the weight and rotor span of most military helicopters, which are capable of carrying multiple patients.
Wheaton Community Hospital, the City of Wheaton, MN, and a physician at the hospital will pay $846,461 to settle whistleblower allegations that the hospital's admission practices violated the False Claims Act, the U.S. Justice Department said.
The government charged that from 1998 to 2004, WCH admitted some patients and kept others admitted to acute care when doing so was not medically necessary. The defendants then billed Medicare for the cost of these admissions, according to the DOJ.
The allegations against WCH arose from a whistleblower lawsuit filed in federal court in Minnesota. Whistleblower Steven Radjenovich, MD, formerly practiced at Wheaton Community Hospital with Stanley Gallagher, MD, a codefendant named in the settlement. Radjenovich will receive $203,150 as his share of the settlement.
Jesse G. Tisher, administrator/CEO at WCH, issued a statement Wednesday that said the tiny hospital with an active staff of four physicians, and 11 RNs, and an average daily census of five patients, was "pleased to have settled a lawsuit with the federal government without an admission of liability."
"The federal government's own reimbursement rules for hospitals like Wheaton Community Hospital are different to help ensure critical access hospital expenses are covered no matter what the number of patients served. The reimbursement rules do not encourage us to allow unnecessary admissions. Our expenses are subject to regular audit," Tisher said.
"In the end, the continued costs of litigation would have been more expensive than settlement. Wheaton Community Hospital determined that our time and effort was best spent providing quality healthcare to our patients and the medically underserved population surrounding us. We are committed to keeping our doors open to serve patients in need," Tisher said.
A maintenance man at Sanford Hospital in Rock Rapids, IA, was arrested after he allegedly confessed to using "peepholes" to spy on female employees in a rest room.
The suspect, John David Elias, 55, also allegedly admitted that he discovered, stole, and unsuccessfully attempted to destroy a hidden surveillance camera that was used by authorities to identify the "peeping Tom," says Lyon County Sheriff Blythe Bloemendaal.
"The tip came to us from an employee of the hospital. I sent two guys up and they determined that the holes were drilled. So, we knew somebody was actually doing it. There was a step ladder set up in the storage room to access the holes," Bloemendaal says.
Sheriff's investigators plugged the holes, and then hid a camera inside the storage room and pointed it at the step ladder. "No reason to go up the ladder other than to access the holes," Bloemendaal says. "It's in there for a few days and they go in to retrieve the memory card to review it to see if he had accessed the ladder and the camera is gone. So no doubt in my mind he goes up the ladder, sees the holes are plugged, starts looking around, sees my camera, destroys it and throws it in a dumpster in a town 20-something miles away."
Bloemendaal says Elias confessed to investigators, and told them where they could find the destroyed camera in a dumpster in the nearby town of Sibley. "Mr. Elias did confess to my detective of doing this," Bloemendaal says.
A telephone message left at Elias' George, IA, home by HealthLeaders Media was not returned.
Elias, who had no prior criminal record, was arrested on Dec. 27 and charged with misdemeanor counts of invasion of privacy, third-degree theft, and tampering with evidence. He was freed after posting $2,000 bond, the sheriff's office reported.
The restroom was used exclusively by hospital employees, and no patients were accosted, said Ed Weiland, president of the Sanford Health Network. "There was no HIPAA violation. This was an employee-only area. We did a complete search of the facility to make sure this were no other violations," Weiland says.
Elias no longer works at the hospital. "I don't know if discharged is the word or if he resigned. All I can tell you is that he is no longer employed here," Weiland says.
Here—in no particular order of importance—are a handful of issues, ideas, and trends affecting the healthcare HR arena that I think will be with us in the coming year.
1. The healthcare sector will continue to see job growth. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports have shown healthcare to be one of the few sectors in the overall economy that has seen job growth since the Great Recession officially started in December 2007.
Admittedly, healthcare job growth slowed in 2009. But an uptick in job growth over the last three months suggests the healthcare sector may enjoy a hiring resurgence in 2010. For one thing, the healthcare reform bill that is expected to pass Congress is supposed to insure another 30 million Americans, making the need for healthcare workers even more acute. And, even if healthcare reform doesn't pass, we will still be a nation that is aging at an unstoppable pace.
The graying demographic will demand more healthcare workers. Who's hiring? If recent trends hold up, hospitals will continue to hire, but the ambulatory services sector has been accounting for nearly half of the new hires in the healthcare sector. Census Bureau data also show that ambulatory services have generated more revenues than hospitals for the past three years.
2. The hunt for qualified healthcare IT workers will intensify. HHS has pretty much acknowledged that we don't have enough qualified workers to create and maintain the complex, interoperable healthcare computer systems that must be in place by 2014. That's why HHS last month earmarked $112 million in grants for various IT workforce development programs.
HHS also earmarked $60 million in grants last month for researchers to target "breakthrough advances" that overcome barriers to the adoption and meaningful use of health IT. It was only last week that HHS came up with a definition of "meaningful use." One would have thought that these core issues would have been resolved before the federal mandate on hospitals to invest billions on healthcare IT.
3. Wash your hands!HR will be asked to improve employee awareness on this very important—yet remarkably basic—healthcare issue. Be creative! Then send me your ideas.
4. Coming soon to a hospital near you: Unions. If you are still in denial about the full frontal movement on the healthcare sector by organized labor, you are probably in the wrong job. In December three large RN unions merged to form the 150,000-member National Nurses United. They are quite blunt about their objectives. "We are going to make sure we organize every single direct-care RN in this country. RNs and our patients deserve to have a national nurses' movement that can advocate for them," said Deborah Burger, RN, one of three charter co-presidents of NNU. This is not empty talk. NNU is seasoned, smart, well-organized, and they have the financial wherewithal to make good on their vows.
The Service Employees International Union is also expected to make a push for just about every other healthcare worker. Assuming that healthcare reform winds down in 2010, a Democratic Congress and a labor-friendly President Obama could rekindle their support for the now-dormant Employee Free Choice Act, the single most important piece of pro-labor legislation in at least 50 years.
5. Mandatory staffing ratios. It's quite simple. The best way for unions to increase their dues-paying membership is to make staffing ratios a top issue. It's coming to your state. Bank on it.
6. Cracking down on patient confidentiality. It was big news when a California hospital worker sold to a tabloid newspaper confidential information about the late Farah Fawcett's battle with terminal cancer.
Healthcare workers at other hospitals were fired for snooping into the records of Nadia "Octomom" Suleman and California First Lady Maria Shriver, to name a few. It's not just the high-profile cases in LaLa Land, however. Twitter, You Tube, Facebook, and dozens of other social media, create any number of new outlets for patient confidentiality violations in every town in the nation.
If you haven't had a recent discussion with employees about the importance of patient confidentiality, that would be a good way to start the year. The federal government wants desperately to show the public that electronic health records are secure from snoops and hackers and the feds are salivating for the chance to make an example out of HIPAA violators. Don't let it be you.
7. Healthcare sector employee health and wellness programs. You would think the healthcare sector would be ahead of the curve when it comes to employee health and wellness programs. I have found no evidence that this is the case. There are a lot of great healthcare role models out there, of course, but there appear to be many sluggards as well. This is a movement that will continue to gain momentum as more and more healthcare entities discover that it is cost-efficient and a morale booster.
8. More whistleblower lawsuits. I wrote in July that "all of the pieces are in place for a dramatic crackdown on fraud within the healthcare sector." This will hold true in 2010. We aren't just talking about the store-front, bogus durable medical equipment suppliers in Miami. We are learning every day of established healthcare organizations that are paying enormous fines to settle Medicare/Medicaid fraud allegations raised by whistleblowers.
The government is quite serious about cracking down on fraud. Whistleblowers—and their lawyers—can collect as much as 30% of the value of the settlements, which often are in the millions of dollars. "The more that healthcare fraud waste is in the spotlight, it is going to lead to an increase in employees who see this and decide to bring a whistleblower lawsuit and it's going to urge the plaintiff's bar to be more active as well," says Brian Roark, a partner in the litigation group at Bass, Berry & Sims, a Nashville law firm.
These are just some of the trends I've identified. I sure I've missed a few, so I'd like to hear what you have to say.
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