They measured within-hospital quality based on AHRQ’s innovative Inpatient Quality Indicators. Mortality due to heart attacks, pneumonia, and hip replacement were among the indicators examined.
Among the authors’ findings: Within hospitals, patients with private insurance had lower risk-adjusted mortality rates than Medicare patients for 12 out of the 15 indicators examined.
Source: Health Affairs.
UnitedHealthcare, is terminating contracts with up to 2,100 doctors serving 8,000 Medicare Advantage patients in the New York metro region.
There are 2.6 million elderly New Yorkers who receive Medicare, the public health insurance program for the elderly. But one in three patients — nearly 900,000 — are enrolled in Advantage, Medicare HMOs run by private insurers.
Dr. Jonathan Leibowitz, who serves 30 patients under Medicare Advantage at his Brooklyn practice, said he was blindsided by UnitedHealthcare’s decision to give him the boot.
“A patient can’t see his doctor? What are they doing!” he asked.
UnitedHealthcare told Leibowitz that because of “significant changes and pressures in the health-care environment,” he’d be getting the ax on Jan. 1.
From the New York Post.
Researchers found that hospitals eliminate 1.7 full-time jobs for every $100,000 drop in Medicare revenue, and nurses accounted for one-third of those cuts. On average, hospitals do not appear to make up for Medicare cuts by “cost shifting,” but by adjusting their operating expenses over the long run, the study says. The Medicare price cuts in the Affordable Care Act will significantly slow the growth in hospitals’ total revenues and operating expenses.
Study here. We’ve previously reported that cuts affect patients.
Seniors robbed of savings accounts in more than 1,500 recent cases in nursing homes.
The nu
mber of visitors to the federal government’s HealthCare.gov website dropped 88 percent between Oct. 1 and Oct. 13.
99.6% of Healthcare.gov visitors didn’t enroll during ACA debut.
Financial columnist: work less, earn less and get more ObamaCare subsidy.
Over half of fast food workers rely on public assistance programs.
We spend 60% more than the average developed country, according to Richard “Buz” Cooper. But after adjusting for income and price differences, we are spending only 31% more in terms of real resources.
What explains this 31 percent? A large body of evidence suggests that it results from poverty and income inequality, which are more prevalent in the U.S. than in any other OECD country except Chile, Mexico and Turkey. And poverty is associated with substantial increments in spending. For example, the poorest decile of Medicare beneficiaries spends 30-40 percent more than the wealthiest; overall hospital utilization rates in large urban areas are 25-35 percent more than in their wealthiest Zip codes; and hospital readmissions are most prevalent from poor neighborhoods and in safety-net hospitals.
But there is more:
[S]ocial spending…in the U.S. is 33 percent less than predicted from GDP (Panel D)…It is difficult not to connect the dots from inadequate social spending to excess poverty and income inequality to more chronic illness and higher health care spending. These dots reside in the core of the OECD onion, and the failure to cope with them is placing an unsustainable burden on our health care system.
We found that privately insured patients had lower risk-adjusted mortality rates than did Medicare enrollees for twelve out of fifteen quality measures examined. To a lesser extent, privately insured patients also had lower risk-adjusted mortality rates than those in other payer groups. Medicare patients appeared particularly vulnerable to receiving inferior care. (Health Affairs)
This is Jason Shafrin:
How did hospitals respond to the law? Over 95 percent of all California hospitals reported that they offered free care to uninsured patients with incomes at or below 100 percent of poverty. However, higher-income uninsured patients still faced the risk of high prices based on billed charges.
Further, this policy did not help improve the accuracy of the billed charges to Medicare. Medicare billed charges are as ridiculous as ever. As shown in the figure below, Medicare payments equaled 20 percent of billed charges by California hospitals in 2010, down from 43 percent in 1997. Thus, although the uninsured are paying less for hospital care, the insured may be paying relatively more.
The secret that hundreds of employees are now refining involves devices that automate and miniaturize more than 1,000 laboratory tests, from routine blood work to advanced genetic analyses. Theranos’s processes are faster, cheaper and more accurate than the conventional methods and require only microscopic blood volumes, not vial after vial of the stuff. The experience will be revelatory to anyone familiar with current practices, which often seem like medicine by Bram Stoker…Theranos is committing to a half-off discount on Medicare fees. “So a test that costs $100 now, we’ll do $50 or less.
Brad DeLong at The Health Care blog makes these assertions:
Hmm. It’s hard to know where to start.
