A highly publicized study of Texas hospitals found that the use of health IT significantly improves quality and efficiency. But some observers question whether the results reflect the use of electronic records or simply the correlation between health IT adoption and a culture of excellence in some hospitals. Published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the study assessed the level of...
Health Care Industry Archive
January 2009
Atul Gawande, a Boston-area surgeon, researcher and writer for the New Yorker, has just published a fascinating look at how national healthcare systems around the world grew and evolved from very different starting points. The subject is obviously timely because of momentum building behind a major healthcare reform later this year, but it also serves as an important reminder that universal...
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement, which has been in the vanguard of the patient safety movement for many years, is trying to get all U.S. hospitals to test the World Health Organization’s surgical checklist in at least one OR between now and April 1. While IHI doesn’t believe that a government mandate is required, it hopes that peer pressure from hospitals and national organizations...
Last week, I briefly noted a spirited conversation over at Paul Levy’s blog Running a Hospital over the question of how — and even whether — hospitals can find and implement innovative ways to avoid medical errors. This is a huge problem for the healthcare industry both in human terms — the Institute of Medicine found a decade ago that wrong-side surgery, adverse drug...
The first glimpse of the Senate Democrats’ legislation for funding health IT reveals that the Democrats want to use both carrots and sticks to persuade providers to adopt electronic health records. While no mandate is mentioned in the Senate Finance Committee portion of President Obama’s economic stimulus package, it’s reported that hospitals and physicians that participate in Medicare or...
In the economic stimulus package passed by two committees of the U.S. House of Representatives on Jan. 22 is a provision that could have a significant, long-range impact on health care if it’s included in the final version of the bill approved by Congress. The House Ways and Means Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee incorporated a proposal that would require the government...
Highmark and Independence Blue Cross, two Blue health-insurance plans in Pennsylvania that have sought to merge for almost two years, called off the deal today for a seemingly quirky reason: The state insurance commissioner would have forced the combined company to give up either the Blue Cross or Blue Shield trademark. Of course, Highmark CEO Kenneth Melani and Independence CEO Joseph Frick...
Supplying fresh details on the capital crunch that hospitals are facing today, the American Hospital Association said that an increasing number of hospitals are stopping or postponing “shovel-ready projects” that would improve community health care, increase jobs, and support local economies. While the AHA survey was clearly aimed at securing for hospitals a bigger chunk of the billions...
The big standoff between Tufts Medical Center and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, in which Tufts threatened to cut off patients insured by the Blue unless the health-insurance outfit agreed to pay it more, is over. While the two sides have agreed not to disclose terms of the deal (PDF link), hospital consultant Marc Bard told the Boston Globe that Tufts may have won fee increases of up...
Well, physicians in private practice may be singing the blues, but employed doctors are doing just fine, thank you. Despite the economic downturn, in 2008 they received an average salary increase of 4.4 percent for specialists and 4 percent for primary-care physicians, according to Sullivan, Cotter and Associates’ 2008 Physician Compensation and Productivity Survey Report. Nearly...
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