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People, Places, Processes & Products that Influence the Supply Chain |
| Around the Nation Archives |
2007 |
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January ● FEBRUARY ● MARCH ● APRIL ● MAY ● JUNE ● August ● SEPTEMBER ● OCTOBER ● DECEMBER |
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America bails out on HMOs Health maintenance organizations, known for their low-cost medical care, were all the rage just 10 years ago. Today consumers are bailing out of HMOs in record numbers as their costs have risen faster than high-deductible health-insurance plans that offer more doctor choices and services. In particular, HMOs have lost ground to a kissing cousin, the preferred provider organization, or PPO.
A new hip alternative Surgery is the last resort for people who have received little or no relief from hip pain by taking medication or changing their daily activities. Though the materials used for hip surgery should last a lifetime, the normal wear and tear of the body may mean some patients have a second surgery. Hip resurfacing is a bone-conserving technique that is becoming an increasingly popular alternative to total hip replacement. http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=532248&format=print
Studies:
Hospitals Could Do More to Avoid Infections Infections acquired in hospitals, which take a heavy toll on patients, arise mainly from poor hygiene in hospital procedures, not from how sick patients were when they were admitted, according to three new studies.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/
Hospital Building Boom Sparks Worry Cities Will Be Left Behind A building boom under way in the U.S. hospital industry is sparking concern about economic and geographic disparities in health care. Much of the construction is occurring in fast-growing suburbs, as hospitals target the most affluent, insured patients who can afford to pay for top care. At the same time, many urban hospitals -- which often treat poorer people -- are struggling financially, and scores have had to shut their doors.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116416523653730402.html?
The importance of
paperless medicine Electronic medical records systems are the future of the medical industry. They are in a growing number of hospitals, overcoming issues of technical complexity and security. Nationwide, about 24 percent of doctors are using some kind of electronic medical records system, according to the National Ambulatory Care Survey from 2005. http://www.denverpost.com/healthcare/ci_4686566
Timing is Everything: More than a thousand “convenient care” clinics are either operating or in the planning stages. And that number was before the late October announcement that supermarket chain Winn-Dixie would partner with Wellspot Medical Clinics to provide such clinics within its stores and throughout its sizable network. Furthermore, the migration away from the medical campus continues--accelerated and unabated--in other areas. Yet, even with the spectacular growth and emerging presence of convenience-care enterprises, many healthcare executives still don’t get it. These clinics are much more than just a new entry into the healthcare system; they are a harbinger of what lies on the healthcare horizon. Significantly, industry executives would be wise to pay close attention to why they matter.
http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/view_feature.cfm?
Profit and
Questions on Prostate Cancer Therapy The nearly 240,000 men in the United States who will learn they have prostate this year have one more thing to worry about: Are their doctors making treatment decisions on the basis of money as much as medicine? Among several widely used treatments for prostate cancer, one stands out for its profit potential. The approach, a therapy known as I.M.R.T., can mean reimbursement of $47,000 or more a patient. That is many times the fees that urologists make on other accepted treatments for the disease, which include surgery and radioactive seed implants. And it may help explain why urologists have started buying multimillion-dollar I.M.R.T. equipment and software, and why many more are investigating it as a way to increase their incomes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/business/01beam.html?
Health firm to
take risk, spread the rewards
Health Payment Systems, founded this year, is working on a system to give patients simple, straightforward medical bills while saving health plans money and lowering hospitals' bad debt expenses. The underlying premise is hospitals and doctors would incur fewer bad debts if patients were given clear, concise bills for what they owe. http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=537772
How
a Giant Insurer Decided to Oust Hugely Successful CEO How did one of America's most pliant boards turn on its star chief executive? Dr. McGuire's support slowly leached away over the course of a six-month internal investigation. Documentation that could support his defense was sparse. A board-ordered statistical analysis undercut his arguments. And his closest board ally was sidelined by a conflict of interest that unsettled other directors. In the end, directors felt pressure after their lawyer told them federal regulators appeared likely to charge the UnitedHealth chief.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116546114077243097.html?
Out of 76 businesses and organizations from all sectors of the United States economy that applied for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 2006, 45 of them were submitted by healthcare organizations. The Baldrige program started out under an act of Congress as a national award for businesses, first manufacturing, small businesses and the service industry received the honor designed to acknowledge role model organizations. In 2000, the program was expanded to include healthcare and education organizations. This year, criteria and an award process are being tested for nonprofit organizations. Since 1988, there have only been 71 recipients of the award and only six of those were in healthcare. In the healthcare industry, improvement efforts are moving beyond quality projects to transformational change strategy that can achieve overall organizational performance excellence. http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/view_feature.cfm?content_id=85319
Sutter opens in-store clinic The Sutter Health network launched one of the newest aspects of America's health system Thursday in a Natomas Rite Aid drugstore, opening a small walk-in medical clinic where everything from a sports physical to treating a child's earache takes about 15 minutes and costs $59. The debut of Sutter Express Care puts Sutter among five major health care providers experimenting nationally with a business formula that discounts minor medical care while helping chain stores steer more foot traffic to pharmacies, which can account for more than 60 percent of their earnings. Sutter's clinic is just a few feet from Rite Aid's pharmacy at the rear of the store. Sacramento-based Sutter will run the clinics seven days a week with nurse practitioners who can write prescriptions and treat minor problems. http://www.sacbee.com/296/story/89313.html
It's the thought that counts Using brain scans, acupuncture and the nasty stuff that puts the sting in pepper spray, researchers are learning how placebos play out in our brains. These innocuous medications - long used as decoys in clinical drug trials - aren't supposed to have real chemical effect on the body. But experience over the years has taught doctors that some patients who take placebos experience real relief.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-hs.
IHI launches national campaign to reduce medical harm Healthcare professionals today vowed to meet the challenge of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's historic campaign to protect patients from 5 million incidents of harm by drastically reducing infections, surgical complications, and pressure sores.
http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/crhlc/view_news.cfm?
No matter
where patients go, chip lets hospital know It's the stuff of futuristic novels: Everyone is issued a bracelet that emits radio waves to track their location. Where they are and how long they've been there is displayed on a computer screen that's continuously monitored. This technology is no longer just fiction. It's being used now at hospitals across the country. http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006612160347
Electronic
records should have industry standard With the current outdated paper-based health care records system, millions of Floridians are receiving treatment from multiple doctors without efficient coordination of care. As a rapidly growing state prone to natural disasters, it is critical that our health care systems are heading in the right direction using the right technology. Currently, the South Florida Health Initiative is one way local hospitals are learning to connect.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opnion/sfl-18forum41
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FEBRUARY |
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Store Clinics Tap a Public Need, but Many Doctors Call
the Care Inferior Some of the newest players in health care are rubbing doctors the wrong way. You may know them: those small clinics at your neighborhood Wal-Mart, Target or CVS that promise quick attention for routine visits -- sore throats, minor aches and pains, flu shots -- with no appointments needed. The clinics, which go by such names as MinuteClinic, RediClinic, QuickClinic, Medpoint Express, Curaquick and MediMin, offer convenience and low price -- scarce commodities in today's medical marketplace. But while consumers are taking to the concept, physician resistance is building. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/12/AR2007011201858_pf.html
Government to list hospitals that falter in heart attack
care In a dramatic bid to improve hospital performance, the government plans to post a consumer-friendly comparison of hospitals' heart attack and heart failure death rates on the Internet. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) launched a dry run of the program in December by telling nearly 4,000 hospitals how their 30-day death rates for 2003 compare with the national Medicare death rates of 17.8% for heart attacks and 11.6% for heart failure. http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-01-09-cms-heart_x.htm
Strong Medicine Spurred by emerging health threats such as avian flu and bioterrorism, new research tools and a revolutionary understanding of basic human biology (thanks to the human genome project), scientists and doctors say we are on the brink of transforming medical treatment in the 21st century. http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/living/health/16399040.htm
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march 2007 |
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The Doctor's
Office Gets Crowded on the Web The Wall Street Journal, 1.22.2007 While every service imaginable seems to have found a way to thrive on the Web, health has always lagged. But things are heating up, as an Internet billionaire is about to launch a site of his own and an online-health pioneer is changing its services to meet the challenge. Steve Case, who brought the Internet into millions of homes and then ushered America Online through an ill-conceived merger with Time Warner, is wagering tens of millions of dollars that consumers will eventually pay about $100 a year to subscribe to premium services on his Web site. He believes that as Americans are forced to bear more of the cost of their health insurance they'll want a site that digitally stores their medical records and provides telephone services that coaches them about their health, matches them with doctors and helps them unsnarl insurance claims.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116943004976583309.html?
Using Price as a
Marketing Strategy The whole issue of price transparency has become a public relations issue. “What’s the price?” consumers may ask. “Can you publish the price? Tell me how much I am going to pay.” There is of course a need to drive the industry to transparency, but frankly the issue is much too complex to expect that people will eventually have a menu of prices and will literally be able to shop around. Hospitals’ attempts at transparency are in part aimed to calm a confused public while warding off class action lawsuits for inequitable charges. But ask even the frontrunners on this issue who have attempted to quote price, and they will tell you they are not actively looking to market that they can make pricing information available. http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/view_feature.cfm?content_id=86703
Outpatient Outlook The healthcare customer is in large part responsible for the outpatient boom. Patients have latched on to the convenience made possible by improved clinical technologies. Minimally invasive and interventional procedures have decreased the need for lengthy hospital stays, and high-tech imaging equipment has moved out of hospital corridors and into easier-access locations. Be it a freestanding facility in the suburbs or a hospital-based center on a downtown campus, the idea of avoiding the hospital is an attractive one. Clinicians, too, enjoy the freedom and flexibility of the ambulatory setting, which runs more like a 9-to-5 business.
http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/magazine/
Health Alliance
breakup headed to court The head of the Health Alliance blamed "issues of power and control" for the bitter legal dispute between the health-care network and two of its hospitals. Christ Hospital officials countered that the alliance's "broken business model" is behind their move to bolt from the network.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070131/NEWS01/
Doctors and Drug Makers: A Move to End Cozy Ties The New York Times, 2.12.2007 More Hippocrates, less Hunan hot sauce. Free lunches for doctors are under attack yet again. Free lunch deliveries to medical offices, along with those ubiquitous drug company logo pens, have come to symbolize the extensive financial ties between doctors and the drug industry. And there is evidence they influence which drugs are prescribed. But pressure is building against the widely reported gifts and other potential conflicts, an effort that took hold last year when a group of influential doctors condemned financial arrangements between doctors and drug companies in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/business/
DSI's
Tannenbaum adds hospitals to prefab portfolio Diversified Specialty Institutes Inc., which became the nation's third-largest operator of outpatient dialysis clinics last winter, is building a 24-bed hospital using modular and traditional construction in Bensalem, Pa., near Philadelphia. DSI also plans to open a 40- to 60-bed hospital made entirely of prefabricated parts in Phoenix in 2008. DSI says it will build two hospitals a year for itself, and it intends to market its design skills to small, isolated rural health-care systems in need of a low-cost replacements for aging facilities. It's a potentially large market, officials said.
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/
Kaiser has aches, pains
going digital Kaiser Permanente's $4-billion effort to computerize the medical records of its 8.6 million members has encountered repeated technical problems, leading to potentially dangerous incidents such as patients listed in the wrong beds, according to Kaiser documents and current and former employees. At times, doctors and medical staff at the nation's largest nonprofit health maintenance organization haven't had access to crucial patient information, and system outages have led to delays in emergency room care, the documents show. Other problems have included malfunctioning bedside scanners meant to ensure that patients receive the correct medication, according to Kaiser staff
Will all the pieces still fit? Health Alliance CEO Ken Hanover insists his $1.4 billion organization can heal from a rift that has three of its member hospitals trying to leave. This dispute goes to trial Feb. 20 in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. And despite Hanover's hopes, it seems unlikely the nonprofit system will go back to the way it was. Mediation attempts between the Alliance and its wayward members, Christ Hospital in Mount Auburn and the two St. Luke Hospitals in Northern Kentucky, have gone nowhere. A recent ruling by the judge has the hospital group arguing from a weaker position than it would have liked. And even if they're forced to stay, the individual hospitals have the power to hamstring the system from financing any large projects. http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2007/02/19/story2.html
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Health returns as hot issue in '08 race Healthcare, a major theme in the 1992 presidential campaign, has returned as a critical issue in the 2008 contest. But this time, contenders in both parties are placing new focus on preventive care as a way of improving public health and ultimately reducing the skyrocketing cost of medical care.
Cutting-edge hospitals hooked to Wi-Fi support The sometimes desperate isolation of a hospital stay or visit is fast giving way to the digital age. Today's hospitals have Wi-Fi Internet access, patient-information portals and patient blogs. And many electronic gadgets, including iPods, once banned from within hospital walls for fear of interference with equipment, now pose little or no problem. http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/q/chi-0702180401feb18,1,6076434.story
Hospital group offers plan on health coverage for all Joining the national debate over the 47 million people without health insurance, a group of the largest commercial hospital chains plans to propose today that individuals be required to have basic health coverage. The proposal, which the hospital group hopes might eventually find its way into federal legislation, would require individuals to take coverage through employers, when health benefits are offered; purchase it on their own; or if they are eligible, to receive it through existing government programs. The group, the Federation of American Hospitals, said that the plan would add $115.2 billion a year to the $900 billion that federal and state agencies currently spend on health care. It does not indicate where the additional money would come from, raising immediate questions about the political viability of the plan.
Dispute over Health Alliance aired in opening statements Attorneys laid out their cases in the long-simmering spat between the region's largest health-care network and two of its hospitals. As the trial opened, they painted a picture of a troubled organization split by professional rivalries and conflicting missions. At issue is whether St. Luke and Christ hospitals can leave the Health Alliance, the region's largest health-care group. Alliance officials argue the hospitals haven't met the requirements spelled out by its joint operating agreement. Trustees for the two hospitals counter that alliance leadership's decisions endangered the hospitals' charitable missions and their ability to provide top-notch, competitive care.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/
In
the stent era, heart bypasses get a new look After more than a decade-long decline, is heart bypass surgery poised for a comeback? Some doctors say it may be time to give bypass operations a second look. They include even some cardiologists who specialize in the far more popular alternative — using stents to keep coronary arteries open. No one is predicting a sudden surge back to bypass, which is still a far more invasive and initially riskier way to treat plaque-clogged heart arteries, a condition that afflicts millions of Americans. But in light of new safety concerns over the long-term risks of stents, as well as accumulating data indicating that the sickest heart patients may live longer if they receive bypass surgery instead, some well-known stent specialists say the pendulum may have swung too far away from bypass surgery.
The pulse of a
hospital A large hospital like Newton-Wellesley resembles a city within a city. It has its own rhythms, a workday, a night life, and a vast array of citizens -- from professionals to floor cleaners to engineers to volunteers, from wealthy to poor, and, of course, from the sick and the healthy. This is a day in the life of a hospital.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/02/25/
How do you
fight bad debt? Hospitals are swimming in a sea of bad debt that’s grown deeper over the past several years, damaging their margins and causing consternation in the finance suite. Thanks largely to bad debt write-offs that are often attributed in blanket fashion to the uninsured, for-profit hospital chains as a group have reported disappointing earnings for more than a year now. Though nonprofit hospitals are more circumspect about what causes bad debt, anecdotal evidence suggests they face the same issues as their investor-owned brethren. But as many chief financial officers know, blaming broad economic trends like the ever-growing uninsured ranks for bad debt troubles is an oversimplified answer to a complex problem.
Health care
already a key issue in 2008 race Although health care is usually a bigger factor in Democratic primaries than in Republican contests, at least two GOP contenders -- former governors Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin -- are expected to use their extensive track records on the issue as campaign selling points, especially if either emerges as the party's nominee. All of which illuminates the reality that no White House hopeful can be taken seriously in the rapidly evolving 2008 race without confronting what many Americans have long said is one of their biggest concerns: the availability and affordability of health care. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/05/AR2007030501335_pf.html
New generation
of cardiac stents awaits fda approval As patients and doctors wrestle with the potential risks of drug-eluting stents used to treat heart disease, manufacturers are offering the prospect of a new generation of devices that could be safer.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117331777513830369.html?
Cuban-style clinics may be a model for U.S. At the new Leon Medical Center in Hialeah, a white-gloved and uniformed doorman welcomes seniors in fro | |
