Measuring Quality: 368 New Ideas For 2012
How should Medicare and Medicaid measure doctors, hospitals, dialysis centers and other health care providers the government pays? There are 368 new ideas on the table this year, according to a list compiled by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. CMS estimates 60 will be adopted in 2012. Figuring out how to fairly and […]
Lawsuit Accuses Company Of Fraudulently Cycling Patients Through Nursing Homes, Hospice Care
Whistleblowers allege that AseraCare improperly channeled people to gain maximum Medicare reimbursements. In a separate suit, federal attorneys say the company pressured employees to enroll patients in hospice who weren’t dying.
Public Can Be Swayed On Health Law’s Mandate, Survey Finds
The individual mandate is the Affordable Care Act’s least popular provision and lies at the heart of the legal challenge to the law before the U.S. Supreme Court. But a new poll finds that public opinion can be swayed by how the mandate’s implications are described. In general, only 33 percent of Americans support the individual mandate, […]
Medicare Penalties For Readmissions Could Be A Tough Hit On Hospitals Serving The Poor
Federal officials are seeking to make sure patients get the care they need after discharge. But the new policy is likely to disproportionately affect hospitals that treat the most low-income patients, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis.
Study Suggests Readmission Rates May Reflect Broader Hospital Use
The high rate of hospital readmissions has produced a flurry of policy solutions to improve care for patients as they’re being discharged and afterward. But new research suggests more concern might be directed elsewhere: at the doctors who decide not just to send patients back to the hospital, but to admit them in the first […]
Readmissions Not Just A Medicare Problem, Study Finds
Medicare has identified preventable hospital readmissions as a measure of the fragmentation of health care for the elderly, driving up health care costs. A new paper finds younger patients also fail to get needed follow-up care after a hospital stay. About one in 12 adults ages 21 and older were readmitted to hospitals within 30 days of discharge, […]
Iowa Hospitals to NYC: Stop Blaming Your Patients
As Medicare moves with plans to pay hospitals in part by how well they score on reviews by patients, hospitals in low satisfaction regions such as New York have been complaining that their patients are harder to please. Those arguments, however, aren’t going over well in places like Iowa where patients tend to be more positive […]
Support Of Health Law Rebounds A Bit
It’s up. It’s down. Americans’ views about the health care law are, well, fluid. The latest Kaiser Family Foundation monthly poll shows that the law’s popularity rose a bit after hitting a new low last month. (Kaiser Health News is a program of the foundation.) Still, more people don’t like the law than do: 44 percent to […]
Texas Lawsuit Identifies Problems In Medicare Hospice Provisions
Complaint filed in federal court alleges one of the nation’s largest hospice companies and HMO firms defrauded the government by inappropriately shifting patients into the program for terminally ill.
Grumpiest Hospital Patients Are In New York City, Chicago and Florida
Not all hospital patients are alike. Some are harder to satisfy. Especially those who are admitted to hospitals in and around New York City, Chicago and sections of Florida. Patients in those regions of the country gave some of the lowest evaluations of their hospital stays, a Kaiser Health News analysis of Medicare data shows. Those […]
When TLC Doesn’t Satisfy Patients, Elite Hospitals May Pay A Price
As Medicare prepares to factor patient ratings into reimbursements, hospitals everywhere are pulling out the stops to please. Some of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals are struggling to appease their exacting patients.
Few Americans Think Health Is Improving In The U.S.
Public skepticism about health isn’t confined to doubts about last year’s health care law: Most Americans also think the overall health of the public isn’t improving, according to a new poll commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The poll found that 45 percent of people thought the health of Americans had become worse during […]
Public Support Of Health Law Drops Sharply
Many Democrats lost faith that the law would help them, a bad sign for the Obama administration as it tries to maintain support among voters.
Needs Improvement: U.S. Health Care Not Getting Better, Report Finds
America’s health care system is not getting any better even as it gets more expensive, according to the third comprehensive scorecard issued by the Commonwealth Fund, one of the country’s biggest health care foundations. After looking at 42 indicators of health care quality, access, cost and other values, the fund gave the U.S. a score […]
Medicare Releases Patient Safety Ratings For Hospitals
Publication of the new Medicare data on HHS website is a step in the government’s plan to link payments to quality.
What Newt Gingrich Didn’t Say About His Cancer-Screening Expert
At last night’s GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire, Newt Gingrich condemned the government’s latest effort to discourage men from reflexively getting blood tests for prostate cancer by citing the views of Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach. Gingrich stressed some of Eschenbach’s prestigious bona fides, including heading the National Cancer Institute and practicing at one of […]
Things May Get Worse For ‘Worst’ Hospitals, Study Warns
Rating the best hospitals has become commonplace, with U.S. News, research firms and various Internet sites routinely issuing detailed rankings. Now some health researchers have come up with a way to evaluate which hospitals are the worst. In a new paper for Health Affairs, Ashish Jha, John Orav and Arnold Epstein classified 3,229 hospitals by quality, using […]
Palliative Care More Common At Some Hospitals, Study Finds
What do Vermont and the District of Columbia have in common? The two are the only jurisdictions in the country with palliative care teams in all their major hospitals, according to a new survey. Palliative care teams are devoted to easing the symptoms, stress and pain from serious illnesses, both chronic and terminal. The new […]
Cutting Hospital Readmissions: Revolving Doors Still Spinning, Study Finds
As Medicare figures out how to financially penalize hospitals with high readmission rates, a new Dartmouth Atlas study finds hospitals have made very little progress in ensuring that fewer patients return. One possible reason raised by the study: fewer than half of patients had a follow-up appointment with a doctor within two weeks of discharge. […]
A Special Kind Of Health Care Fantasy Fulfilled?
As health policy researchers gathered at the Brookings Institution today to learn about a new trove of data from some of the nations’ biggest health plans, the panel’s moderator, John Carey, noted that he had met his wife in the auditorium years before. There was a different kind of lust in the air again as […]
