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“Physician-owned hospitals seize their moment” – amednews.com
Physician owned and operated facilities are not necessarily bad places to go for healthcare.
American Medical News, amednews.com, reported in April 29, 2013:
When the federal government sorted through the first round of clinical information it was using to reward hospitals for providing higher-quality care in December 2012, the No. 1 hospital on the list was physician-owned Treasure Valley Hospital in Boise, Idaho. Nine of the top 10 performing hospitals were physician-owned, as were 48 of the top 100.
Yet, physicians can no longer own hospitals to which they refer their patients and are severely restricted from expanding those hospitals whose physician ownership was grandfathered.
The continued distrust of physicians and their vilification by Congress and most every state legislature hurts healthcare. It’s time to unburden physicians from lawyer mandated restrictions that never made any sense — repeal the Stark Law and every other restriction on physicians’ referring their patients to entities that they have an ownership in. The laws and the regulations that have been put into place are beyond comprehension and require physicians who are trying to be compliant to spend unnecessary dollars on lawyers. There are many appropriate tools for dealing with fraud and abuse by physicians who over utilize, or bill for services not performed, or who perform sub-par medicine — they can be professionally disciplined, lose their license, go to jail, fined. On the private side, they can be sued. Congress adopts these strict liability patient referral restrictions because they are easy to enforce. That should not be the basis for interfering with an entire industry.
Bill Would Let Texas Doctors Get Data From Driver’s Licenses
Health care providers in Texas could soon collect or verify patient information by swiping that patient’s driver’s license.
The measure allowing such data collection is one of a handful that the Texas Medical Association is pushing this legislative session to help modernize medical practices. The association is also backing bills that would standardize preauthorization forms used by health plans for prescription drugs and health care services.
Of course, this is why we have electronic medical records.
See on www.nytimes.com
Modern Physician: Survey shows Primary-care docs generating more hospital revenue
While physicians in general generated less net revenue for their affiliated hospitals last year, primary-care doctors generated more, on average, than other specialists, according to a survey of hospital chief financial officers conducted by Merritt Hawkins (PDF), an Irving, Texas-based physician recruitment firm.
According to the survey of 102 CFOs conducted in January, physicians in the 18 specialties tracked by Merritt Hawkins brought in an average of almost $1.45 million to their affiliated hospitals—a 9% decrease from the $1.54 million recorded by physicians in 2010, the last time the survey was conducted. But the revenue generated by the direct admissions, procedures, tests and other services ordered by family physicians, internists and pediatricians equaled almost $1.57 million, which was up around 13% from the almost $1.39 million recorded in 2010. (Although it was still below the almost $1.6 million reported in a 2004 Merritt Hawkins survey.) And, while orthopedic surgeons (more than $2.68 million) and invasive cardiologists (almost $2.17 million) were the top revenue-generating specialties, the average figure for the 15 non-primary-care specialists was more than $1.42 million.
See on home.modernphysician.com
ACOs: The Least Agreed-Upon Concept in Healthcare? | Accountable Care Organizations
Five common arguments against accountable care organizations, commentary from experts on each, and an update on Detroit Medical Center’s ACO.
1. In the grand scheme of healthcare spending, ACOs’ savings will be slight.
2. ACOs were designed on a premise that overestimated the level of integration in healthcare.
3. ACOs won’t work when healthcare still operates in a fee-for-service system.
4. ACOs will move patients out of hospitals and hurt hospitals’ revenue.
5. ACOs take healthcare back to the 1990s.
What will prove the ACO model?
The healthcare industry is still in a waiting game as far as ACOs’ results. Although a few mature ACOs like AdvocateCare (and it’s important to keep in mind that the term “mature” means that ACO is only about three years old) have reported hopeful results from its first year. Other newly launched ACOs are not yet able to disclose results. For Medicare savings, the industry has its eye on the Pioneer ACOs, and results from those 32 organizations are expected this summer.
The great EHR switch
With more electronic health record systems continuing to fall short of providers’ expectations, a recent report by Black Book Rankings suggests that 2013 may indeed be the “year of the great EHR vendor switch.”
From the 17,000 active EHR adopters polled, report officials found that as many as 23 percent of medical practices were dissatisfied enough with their EHR systems to consider trading up in the near future.
“The high performance vendors emerging as viable past 2015 are those dedicating responsive teams to address customers’ current demands,” said Black Book’s managing partner Doug Brown, in a press statement.
And in light of Stage 2, officials say provider demands are only increasing. EHR users polled cited numerous cases of software firms underperforming enough to lose crucial market share, with vendor solutions often struggling to keep pace.
Barry Blumenfeld, chief information officer at the eight-hospital MaineHealth, is among those switching EHRs. MaineHealth is in the process of transitioning from Allscripts and MEDITECH to Epic’s EHR. When describing the Allscripts Sunrise Clinical Manager system it had previously, Blumenfeld said it was a “good product,” but really lacked integration capabilities with ancillary and the departmentals. “I’ve been a fan of interoperability my whole life, but I have to say it hasn’t gone quite as fast as we would like, and the thing that’s very important about Epic,” he explained, is that it integrates all workflows for seamless movement between different products.
— This was, of course, inevitable, and it is a good thing. It takes time and practice to know what you need and how to use it when you get it. EHR is one of the most important innovations in health care, and there will be mistakes, disasters, and wasted money before we get things right.
See on www.healthcareitnews.com
93% believe EHR-connected mHealth apps benefit patient care | EHRintelligence.com
More than ninety percent of the 650 physicians polled believe that mHealth apps have the potential to improve patient outcomes, and an equal amount would like to see apps give patients the ability to upload data into their personal EHR file. Eighty-nine percent would recommend an app to a patient in the future. The ability to send patients reminders and alerts topped the mHealth wish list for respondents, followed by allowing patients to access their PHI from mobile devices, making it easier for patients to conduct administrative tasks like appointment scheduling, and getting more accurate self-reported data from patients on a regular basis. Preventative care, diabetes monitoring, weight management, and medication adherence were all areas of opportunity for mHealth apps to address.
See on ehrintelligence.com
Physicians Who e-prescribe Choose Cheaper Drugs, Report Says
Surveyed U.S. endocrinologists and primary care physicians (PCPs) said they use e-prescribing for 76 percent of their Medicare patients and 79 percent of their non-Medicare patients, figures that are expected to grow in the next year, according to a report from research and advisory firm Decision Resources. The report, which surveyed 70 endocrinologists and 70 PCPs as well as 25 managed-care organization (MCO) pharmacy directors also found that approximately 80 percent of PCPs and endocrinologists say they would prescribe a less expensive DPP-IV inhibitor to their patients with Type 2 diabetes or hypertension, reflecting high cost-sensitivity.
Match Day: More medical graduates entering primary care
The number of medical students committing to primary care rather than specialties increased for the fourth straight year in the largest ‘match program” in history.
[The success of healthcare reform depends on primary care physicians, and there is a shortage. Hopefully, this trend continues.]
See on www.usatoday.com
Actually, Mr. Brill, Fixing Healthcare Is Kinda Simple | Wired Science | Wired.com
When you need health care, you enter not a market but a con game in which you’re first a guarantor and source of profit, and second a patient. Wired Science blogger David Dobbs explains why the government needs to step up. See on www.wired.com
Patients have no clout in so-called market driven healthcare because of its fragmented delivery and billing systems. Having insurance further mystifies the process and hides the information necessary to make market decisions. Something like a patients union is needed to equalize the playing field. For now, Obamacare is all that patients have to give them some protection against the two Titans in healthcare who have all the market power.
Christensen, Flier and Vijayaraghavan: The Coming Failure of ‘Accountable Care’
In The Wall Street Journal, Clayton Christensen, Jeffrey Flier and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan say that the Affordable Care Act’s updated versions of HMOs are based on flawed assumptions about doctor and patient behavior. See on online.wsj.com
Beware the nay sayers. ACOs and other accountable care measures can only succeed if there IS a change in physician behavior. Changing the way healthcare is done in this country is the basis (and only workable basis) for meaningful improvement in healthcare while controlling costs at the same time. No one ever thought it would be easy or quick.
Joseph Rugg's Health Law Blog 