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News Briefs |
Updated May 9, 2008 |
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| PinnacleHealth System has sold its Seidle Hospital campus in Mechanicsburg to a Philadelphia firm that plans to open a facility for patients dependent on a ventilator. |
PinnacleHealth said it decided to sell the Seidle campus because it contained space that wasn't being put to good use, while the company also closed a 26-bed skilled nursing home at the site last November, reported the Patriot-News. Fox Subacute Management Inc. paid $3.5 million for the facility, while PinnacleHealth will lease space from the new owner and continue to operate its FirstPlace Health Care, which provides urgent care, the Patriot-News added. (Patriot-News, May 7, 2008) |
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| The Bush administration appears to be softening a policy that states have complained hindered their efforts to expand health care coverage for poor children under the State Children's Health Insurance Program. | In a letter sent to states, the administration says it will give states more flexibility to prove that they have enrolled 95 percent of poor children from eligible families – a condition, laid out in an August directive, for using federal funds to expand coverage under SCHIP, reported the Wall Street Journal. Hardly any state meets that threshold, and since then several states have been forced to scale back their plans to expand coverage beyond children from families at twice the poverty level of $42,400 for a family of four, the Journal noted. The administration’s letter said it will qualify many of the 15 states that may not have met the criteria using data from the Current Population Survey; for example, state surveys can now be used, the Journal added. (Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2008) | |
| Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has expanded its drug offerings to include three-month supplies of prescription drugs for $10, stepping up the fight to attract U.S. consumers seeking cheaper medicines. | Wal-Mart also will offer more than 1,000 additional over-the-counter medicines for $4 or less, and says it has saved consumers $1.16 billion since starting its $4 generic-drug program in 2006, reported Bloomberg News. Wal-Mart said its discount stores, Neighborhood Market supermarkets and Sam's Club pharmacies will fill prescriptions for as many as 350 generic medications at $10 for a 90-day supply, while also adding $9 medications to treat breast cancer, menopause and hormone deficiency, Bloomberg News added. (Bloomberg News, May 6, 2008) | |
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| The number of medical malpractice case filings last year continued to decline in Pennsylvania but increased slightly in Philadelphia, according to data released by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. |
Both numbers are down significantly from 2002, the year
before the state Supreme Court instituted rules to prevent venue shopping
for sympathetic juries and required lawyers to secure a certificate of merit
for their cases, and the state legislature created the MCARE Fund to help
subsidize malpractice insurance, reported the Philadelphia Business
Journal.
There were 1,617 medical malpractice cases filed statewide in 2007, compared to 1,693 in 2006 and 2,903 in 2002. In Philadelphia there were 586 filings in 2007, up slightly from 569 in 2006, but on par with numbers from 2003 through 2006, and still less than half of the 1,365 filed in 2002, while data in the four suburban Philadelphia counties were also in line with numbers from 2003 through 2006, the Business Journal noted. In Philadelphia, jury verdicts decreased in frequency and severity. There were 37 medical malpractice jury verdicts, down from 46 in 2006 and 56 in 2005, while the percentage of verdicts for the defense increased to 73 percent from 71.7 percent in 2006, 62.5 percent in 2005 and 59.2 percent between 2000 and 2003, the Business Journal reported. Statewide, the number of verdicts decreased to 185 from 229 in 2006 and 223 in 2005, while the percentage of verdicts for the defense (82.7 percent) was similar to 2006 (83.4 percent), the Business Journal said. There were nine jury verdicts resulting in awards of $10 million or more between 2000 and 2003, compared to five such jury verdicts in the past four years: three in 2004, none in 2005, two in 2006 and one last year. All but one of those was in Philadelphia, with the other occurring in 2006 in Montgomery County, the Business Journal added. (Philadelphia Business Journal, April 14, 2008) |
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| Health insurers are beginning to mine their patient data to look for drug safety red flags. | WellPoint Inc., in collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration, plans to launch one of the first real-time drug-surveillance systems: starting early next year, the insurer will systematically scan the medical information of more than half of its 35 million members to look for hidden patterns or spikes in medical problems that might be linked to certain medication or combination of drugs as they happen, reported the Wall Street Journal. Until now, the drug-safety monitoring system used by the FDA has been spotty, slow and passive, relying largely on harried doctors and drug companies to report problems they see crop up with patients, and capturing less than 10 percent of bad reactions, the Journal added. (Wall Street Journal, April 15, 2008) | |
| Congress should establish a budget-neutral adjustment to increase payments for doctors who provide primary care services, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission recommended. | The payment adjustment would be part of Medicare’s physician fee schedule and would be payable for certain services under the statutory definition of primary care, including office and home visits, and visits to patients in nonacute facilities, reported Modern Physician. HHS would establish criteria to determine which physicians would be eligible to receive the adjustment, while specialty physicians could stand to lose financially under this proposal, and some specialty societies are hoping that Congress will pursue other avenues to improve primary care payments, Modern Physician added. (Modern Physician, April 9, 2008) | |
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| An expansion in Pennsylvania's Children's Health Insurance Program helped add more than 15,000 children to the program in a year, according to the state Department of Insurance. | The program, one of the country's oldest and most successful, grew by nearly 3,000 from February to April, leaving about four percent of children in the state without health insurance, one of the lowest percentages in the country, reported the Tribune-Review. Pa.’s CHIP waiting list emptied during the past year, one year after the state got permission from the federal government to increase income eligibility – to about $42,000 for a family of two and $66,600 for a family of four, the Tribune-Review added. (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, May 3, 2008) | |
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Federal health officials proposed adding dangerous blood
clots in the leg and eight other conditions to the list of complications
that Medicare would not pay to treat if they were acquired at the hospital. |
Medicare set a new precedent last year by saying it would no longer pay hospitals for treating eight "never events" – conditions that occur as a result of hospital error, such as giving a patient the wrong blood type, reported the Associated Press. The newly-proposed rules add nine conditions, including: deep-vein thrombosis, ventilator-associated pneumonia, bloodstream infections with the staph aureus bacteria, and Legionnaire's disease. The government estimates that the proposed rule will save Medicare $50 million annually during each of the next three years, the Associated Press added. (Associated Press, April 15, 2008) | |
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| The CEO of Lancaster Regional Medical Center and Heart of Lancaster Regional Medical Center will be leaving his post after just 16 months. | Mike Cowling is going to lead two Health Management Associates hospitals in the Charlotte, N.C., area, while his departure will slow a consolidation plan recently announced for the two hospitals, reported the Lancaster New Era. Cowling's replacement will be the fifth leader in eight years at Regional and the sixth in nine years at Heart, since HMA bought the two hospitals, the New Era added. (Lancaster New Era, April 17, 2008) | |
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| Triumph Healthcare has shut down its Harrisburg long-term acute care facility. | The 36-bed facility operated for eight years in leased space at the former Polyclinic Hospital on North Third Street, while Triumph said the operation closed because PinnacleHealth System, which owns the site, refused to renew the lease, reported the Patriot-News. Triumph said it challenged Pinnacle's decision in Dauphin County court, but concluded it might not get a favorable ruling before the April 30 lease expiration, and had to close, the Patriot-News noted. The Harrisburg area's other long-term acute care facilities are operated by Select Medical, which occupies leased space at Holy Spirit Hospital in Cumberland County, and HealthSouth, which has a facility in Lower Allen Twp. in Cumberland County, the Patriot-News added. (Patriot-News, April 27, 2008) | |
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| Blue Mountain Health System, which has struggled financially since it formed in 2004 by the merger of Palmerton Hospital and Gnaden Huetten Hospital in Lehighton, has had its first profitable quarter. | The hospitals' net operating income was about $220,000 for the quarter, which the system attributed to hiring several new physicians, including a neurologist, a pulmonologist and an additional orthopedic surgeon; while the system projected to lose $1.2 million this fiscal year – down from a $5.5 million loss in the July 1, 2006, to June 30, 2007, fiscal year, reported the Morning Call. Hospital President Andrew E. Harris said he hopes to have achieved a complete financial turnaround by the 2008-09 fiscal year, the Morning Call added. (Morning Call, April 25, 2008) | |
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| Struggling Sacred Heart Hospital, which once went to court to disentangle itself from what is now Lehigh Valley Hospital, has approached its old rival about collaborating on more services and perhaps becoming fully affiliated. | The announcement comes four months after Sacred Heart, a 263-bed hospital serving Allentown's poorest residents, stopped performing heart surgery as it looked for ways to stay financially afloat in the face of increased competition from regional medical giants such as LVH and St. Luke's Hospital, reported the Morning Call. Sacred Heart has suffered through five straight years of operating losses, including a 2007 deficit of $6.3 million, and a poor credit rating from Moody's Investor Services, which predicted Sacred Heart's financial health would remain poor because of surging competition from the Lehigh Valley Hospital and St. Luke's networks, both of which have been expanding, the Morning Call added. (Morning Call, April 24, 2008) | |
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| The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority released its 2007 Annual Report outlining a strategic plan that aligns its activities more closely with its educational and quality improvement mission. |
Selected initiatives are aimed at educating hospital boards
in their role in promoting patient safety, creating an online forum for more
routine sharing of best practices and lessons learned among patient safety
officers and creating a patient safety liaison pilot program that will offer
health care facilities on-site education or quality improvement assistance
from the Patient Safety Authority. The data in the 2007 Annual Report shows
that there is substantial variation in the number of reports submitted by
different health care facilities.
While a vast majority of hospitals are reporting serious events (events that cause harm to the patient) and incidents (events that do not cause harm to the patient), the volume varies greatly from facility to facility, which the Authority attributes largely to differences among them regarding how to interpret language in Act 13 as to what is reportable. The Authority will work with the Department of Health to offer facilities more guidance as to what should be reported to bridge the gap in facility reporting levels. (Patient Safety Authority, April 30, 2008) |
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| Doctors who want to go paperless when ordering drugs for their Medicare patients now have a set of federal standards on how to do it, while those who are prescribing electronically already have a year in which to become compliant with the rules. | The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on April 2 released final e-prescribing regulations for Medicare Part D under which physicians and pharmacies will not be required to use electronic prescriptions but must follow the new standards if they do, reported American Medical News. The regulations, set to take effect in April 2009, have four categories – formulary and benefits, medication history, fill status notification, and provider identifiers – while the standards, required by Medicare law, will govern how physicians, pharmacies and drug plans will communicate electronically to handle drug orders, AMNews added. (American Medical News, April 28, 2008) | |
| The pace of health care quality improvement appears to be slowing, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's fifth annual report compiling federal and state data on more than 200 quality metrics. | A composite measure of health care quality improved at a 2.3 percent average annualized rate between 1994 and 2005, with the rate falling to 1.5 percent from 2000 to 2005, reported American Medical News. In a first stab at examining the cost efficiency of the American health care system, AHRQ noted that costs, as estimated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, jumped 6.7 percent from 1994 to 2005, although AHRQ said that cost and quality cannot be reliably compared because expenditures are comprehensively measured, but quality is not, AMNews added. (American Medical News, April 28, 2008) | |
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| Drug and medical device companies should be banned from offering free food, gifts, travel and ghost-writing services to doctors, staff members and students in all 129 of the nation’s medical colleges, the Association of American Medical Colleges has concluded. |
The proposed ban is the result of a two-year effort by the
group to create a model policy governing interactions between the schools
and industry and, while schools can ignore the association’s advice, most
follow its recommendations, reported the New York Times. In addition
to the gift, food and travel bans, the report recommended that medical
schools:
(New York Times, April 28, 2008) |
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| Reports of patients who acquired infections in Pennsylvania hospitals rose 57 percent in 2006 – a spike analysts attribute to better reporting and added categories. | According to the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, the state's 165 general hospitals reported 30,237 infections in 2006, for a rate of 19.2 per 1,000 cases; compared to 19,154 cases, or rate of 12.2 per 1,000, the previous year, reported the Morning Call. The council attributed the increase to significant strides hospitals made in identifying and reporting infections that came from catheters, surgery and unwashed hands, while the council required hospitals to report even more types of infections beginning in the latter half of 2005, the Morning Call noted. Because changing variables did not permit an apples-to-apples comparison from one full year to the next, the council also provided fourth-quarter results, which were more alike: infection rates for the quarter dropped from 16.3 per 1,000 cases to 15.1, a direction that council officials attributed to prevention efforts in hospitals, the Morning Call added. (Morning Call, April 10, 2008) | |
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| On average, Pennsylvania's hospitals are making money, but a quarter of them are still in the red, according to a report released by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. | Forty-one facilities, or 24 percent of the 170 general acute care hospitals statewide, lost money in fiscal 2007, while the number of hospitals with a three-year average total margin of 2 percent or less grew to 29 from 14, reported the Business Times. The average statewide operating margin increased to 4.82 percent in fiscal 2007 from 3.99 percent in 2006, while the average total margin statewide, which includes revenue from investments and other sources unrelated to patient care, grew by more than a full percentage point to 6.51 percent in fiscal 2007 from 5.39 percent in fiscal 2006, the Business Times noted. Nearly three-fourths of the increase in total margin came from growth of $341 million in operating income, the Business Times added. (Pittsburgh Business Times, April 18, 2008) | |
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The proposed Commonwealth Medical College will soon own a
3-acre lot to build a $75 million headquarters beside the Northeast
Intermediate School.
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Medical school officials reached perhaps their biggest milestone yet when the Scranton School Board unanimously approved the nearly $1 million sale of the Pine Street parcel, while Commonwealth administrators expect construction of the future college’s headquarters to begin as soon as this fall, and completion is set for early 2011, reported the Times-Tribune. The school’s future headquarters will include administrative offices along with classrooms and research space, which students will use during their first two years of education, while medical degree students will spend their second two years of training serving the community and learning at satellite campuses in undetermined locations throughout northeastern Pa., the Times-Tribune added. (Times-Tribune, April 8, 2008) | |
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| The leaders of Scranton’s second-biggest hospital expect it will take 4½ more months to find a CEO. | According to John Starcher, the hospital’s interim president and CEO, Mercy Hospital’s board wants to hire its "servant leader" to start by Labor Day, while the board and the Sisters of Mercy are spearheading the search to replace Jacquelyn Gaines, who resigned for unspecified reasons Feb. 8 after eight months in charge, reported the Times-Tribune. After Mercy’s board hires a hospital leader this summer, Starcher will assume leadership of Catholic Healthcare Partners’ Northeast region hospitals, while also taking a seat on Mercy’s board, and acting as a liaison between Scranton and his corporate colleagues, the Times-Tribune added. (Times-Tribune, April 16, 2008) | |
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| The Bush administration violated federal law last year when it restricted states' ability to provide health insurance to children of middle-income families, and its new policy is therefore unenforceable, according to a ruling by the Government Accountability Office. | The ruling strengthens the hand of at least 22 states, including New Jersey, that already provide Children's Health Insurance Program coverage or want to do so, as the accountability office said the new policy amounts to a marked departure from a longstanding, settled interpretation of federal law, which must be submitted to Congress for review before it can take effect, the Times noted. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services maintains that its Aug. 17 letter is still in effect, which told states what steps they needed to take to be sure the children's health program would not displace or crowd out private coverage under group health plans, while New Jersey and several other states have filed lawsuits challenging the Bush administration policy, and Congress may consider legislation to suspend the directive, the Times added. (New York Times, April 19, 2008) | |
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Leaders on the Senate Finance Committee are working to
move forward on a Medicare bill that would stave off Medicare physician
payment cuts. |
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who chairs the panel, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), its ranking member, are working with Senate leadership to move a bill this spring that is expected to include several provisions in a bill introduced by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) that would halt any cuts to Medicare physician payments over the next 18 months, reported Modern Physician. The measure would begin on July 1, staving off a scheduled 10 percent cut to physician reimbursement, while maintaining physician payments at their current level for the rest of 2008, and in 2009 implementing a 1.8 percent increase, Modern Physician added, noting that temporary halts to these types of payment reductions—triggered by Medicare’s sustainable growth-rate formula—have been implemented frequently by Congress over the past five years, Modern Physician. (Modern Physician, April 1, 2008) | |
| A bill that would prohibit discrimination by health insurers and employers based on the information that people carry in their genes won final approval in Congress. | The legislation, which President Bush has indicated he will sign, prohibits health insurance companies from using genetic information to deny benefits or raise premiums for individual policies – it is already illegal to exclude individuals from a group plan because of their genetic profile – while employers who use genetic information to make decisions about hiring, firing or compensation could be fined as much as $300,000 for each violation, reported the New York Times. Some patients worry that they may be denied jobs or face higher insurance premiums if a genetic red flag shows up in their medical records, while many who do learn that they are at higher risk for a disease opt not to ask their insurance companies to cover the costs of the genetic test, to keep the information secret. Some try to persuade medical professionals not to enter the test results in their health records; others keep the information from even their own doctors, the Times noted. The bill may be hard to enforce, some experts say, and it does not address discrimination by long-term care insurers or life insurers, the Times added. (New York Times, May 2, 2008) | |
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| The Pennsylvania House approved legislation that would impose new underwriting guidelines on health insurance plans offered to individuals and small businesses. | The legislation, which now moves on to the Senate, would limit the ability of health plans to consider certain factors such as health history in setting rates, while insurers could consider age and geographic region in setting rates, reported the Post-Gazette. The bill also would require insurers to spend 85 percent of premiums on health care or be required to issue rebates to policyholders, while it also would allow the Insurance Department to disapprove a rate increase request, in part, because the insurer has not operated efficiently or has not controlled costs for avoidable hospital-acquired infections or management of chronic disease, the Post-Gazette added. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 2, 2008) | |
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