Healthcare Roundup: Twin Cities Layoffs, Medicare Payment Tinkering, Google Deal with Insurer, and More

Clinics get hit by layoffs — Park Nicollet Health Services and North Memorial Health Care, both in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, are terminating 600 workers and 233 employees, respectively. Both organizations include outpatient clinics as well as hospitals and other facilities. Their pink-slip announcements follow hundreds of layoffs from Allina Hospitals and Clinics and Fairview Health Services, two other market leaders in Minnesota. Park Nicollet said it would close one of its 25 clinics. [Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune]

Putting lipstick on the Medicare pig – Senate and House leaders have met with members of President-Elect Obama’s health care team to discuss reworking the Medicare payment formula for physicians. The key change under consideration would be to exclude $100 billion worth of drugs administered by physicians from the income subject to the contentious Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula. That would reduce the amount the government would lose by forgoing cuts in physicians’ Medicare fees. But this bit of tinkering fails to address the central problem with the approach: the more that Medicare lowers fees, the more physicians jack up their service volume. And for the past several years, Congress hasn’t had the nerve to actually back up CMS on its proposed fee cuts. [Source: California Healthline]

New Jersey hospitals get reprieve –- The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services has awarded $44 million in grants to six financially troubled hospitals to maintain healthcare access in underserved communities. The grants, which range from $1 million to $22 million, are going to hospitals that face closure or significant cuts in service. They include East Orange General  Hospital, Jersey City Medical Center, Kimball Medical Center in Lakewood, Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, Raritan Bay Medical Center in Perth Amboy, and St. Mary’s Hospital in Passaic. Eighteen New Jersey hospitals have closed since 2000, and the most recent shutdown, of Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center in Plainfield, caused widespread community protests. [Sources: Healthcare Finance News, New Jersey Monthly]

Insurer supports Google — Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts has announced that its members can import their BCBSMA health history into their Google Health personal health record. BCBSMA says it is the first health plan to integrate its PHR with the Google Health platform. Earlier this year, Aetna said that its members could import their claims-based PHRs into Microsoft HealthVault. BCBSMA, by the way, is the same plan that has told network physicians they will not be able to participate in its incentive programs unless they start prescribing electronically. [Source: BlueCross Blue Shield of Massachusetts]

New York requires information sharing — New York State is requiring hospitals that acquire new clinical information systems to make them interoperable with the in-progress Statewide Health Information Network for New York. The state is doing this as part of its certificate of need process, which covers hospital information systems. [Source: Government Health IT]

Cigna cuts copayments for Lipitor -– Cigna has cut copayments for the cholesterol medication Lipitor by up to 50 percent to an average of $15. The company said it took this action to make the widely used medication more affordable during the economic recession. Cigna officials also said they had negotiated a lower price for Lipitor from Pfizer. They suggested that Pfizer would benefit by encouraging more patients to take Lipitor before its patent protection expires. [Source: Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report]

Walgreen’s expands retail clinics — After a dip in the number of retail clinics last summer, the number of U.S. clinics jumped to 1,135 on Dec. from 1,104 a month earlier. According to Merchant Medicine, a Minneapolis-based research and consulting firm that follows the sector, Walgreen’s accounts for most of the growth in the field. Walgreen’s, which now operates 293 in-store clinics, plans to have 400 by the end of August. According to the drugstore chain, retail clinics help address the drop in the number of physicians going into primary care. [Source: Chicago Tribune]