Health Care Headlines

Healthcare organizations across the country have significantly ramped up the focus on patient safety and quality improvement, and for good reason. Under the healthcare reform law, healthcare providers’ reimbursements will be linked to the quality of healthcare services, including patients’ experiences, starting in 2013. A slew of efforts — federal demonstration projects, provider-payor collaborations and provider-level pilot projects, to name a few — are cropping up, as the healthcare industry prepares for this shift in healthcare payment and delivery.

Almost universally, creating and maintaining policies and procedures is on the top five list of things avoided and reviled in the healthcare leadership responsibilities list. Is it possible to make this chore into a process that is almost painless?  Well, perhaps not painless, but at least manageable. When done correctly and in an efficient manner, management of the policies and procedures in your facility can be a tolerable and controllable process.

Healthcare spending is forecasted to grow at a historically low rate of 7.5% in 2013, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC estimates.

No one sees the connection between unhealthy lifestyles and rising medical costs more clearly than healthcare workers, and yet they’re hardly models of vim and vigor — a Thomson Reuters Healthcare report last year found hospital employees to be “generally sicker than the rest of the U.S. workforce.” 

The first thing to understand, according to Cal eConnect board member Don Crane, is that the work is the most important thing.

Legislation to require nurses, doctors and other hospital staff who decline to get a flu shot to wear a mask while working passed 23-9 in the California Senate today.

The shameful, deceitful, irresponsible ad campaign by Big Tobacco on California’s Proposition 29 seems so transparent that one would think it was a theatrical satire rather than a duel to the death.

Giving stroke victims cholesterol-lowering statins while they are still in the hospital increases the likelihood that they will survive the stroke and be able to go home, researchers reported Tuesday. 

The IHI Fellowship Program is a year-long immersion program for mid-career health professionals.  The program has two overarching goals, to:  Develop health care leaders with the drive, skills, and experience to spread improvement in the United States and globally; and
Build capability within health care organizations to reach dramatically higher levels of performance.

Renowned health care visionary Don Berwick, MD, MPP, urged 450 California hospital leaders yesterday to accelerate their work in improving the quality and safety of care delivered to patients. The former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and founder of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement spoke May 17 to leaders at quality improvement forums held in Walnut Creek and Newport Beach.

Leaders in an accountable care model in Sacramento, Calif. — including Blue Shield of California, the California Public Employees Retirement System (the purchaser), Hill Physicians Medical Group and Sacramento-area hospitals owned by San Francisco-based Dignity Health (formerly Catholic Healthcare West) — recently shared insight into how they established their integrated care model in a Health Affairs interview.

Health care reductions made up more than one-third of the additional $6.5 billion Governor Jerry Brown (D) needed to trim since the last budget proposal in January. Five months ago, the governor was only staring down a $9.2 billion deficit. Now it’s estimated at $15.7 billion.

Numerous Riverside County hospitals and a nursing home will conduct drills this week involving a supposed gunman opening fire.

HFS Consultants (HFS), a California-based healthcare consulting company, and a nationally recognized leading expert in wage index, announces the initial launch of an interactive tool that delivers real-time benefit updates and offers education and best practices for wage index reporting.

Financial disclosure by not-for-profit hospitals will be one subject of a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing on oversight of tax-exempt organizations.

In recent months, our Board of Supervisors and the CalOptima Board of Directors caused a renaissance in governance, policy-making, and procedural changes at CalOptima.

When the first gold-colored shovel tip grazed the dirt, a dream came true for Dr. Peter Boss.  On a sun-drenched Wednesday morning, Bear Valley Community Hospital board, staffers, family and friends hosted an official ground-breaking ceremony for the Brenda Boss Family Resource Center, an 8,500-square-foot expansion of the hospital.

After 60 years of service, the Visiting Nurses Association & Hospice of Southern California has a new name.
Its mission hasn’t changed, though. Since it began back in 1952, the Visiting Nurses Association and Hospice of Southern California Inc. has served the community.

As hospital leaders prepare to take their advocacy messages to Capitol Hill, they should urge their lawmakers to extend key Medicare provisions and enact drug shortage legislation, AHA Executive Vice President Rick Pollack said today at the AHA Annual Membership Meeting. 

Hospital leaders who believe their emergency room patients’ wait times compare well with competitors may have to rethink those assumptions now that two ED wait time quality metrics are posted on the Hospital Compare website.

National Nurses Week, May 6-12, provides an opportunity to recognize the multitude of ways the nursing profession contributes to the health of the nation. Since March 2010, the Affordable Care Act has given nurses and other health care professionals a historic opportunity to improve the health of millions of Americans. Through an array of provisions in the law, the nursing profession is positioned to contribute even more to both health and health care.

The Urgent Care Association of America has awarded St. Bernardine Medical Center’s two urgent care centers with the “Certified Urgent Care Center” designation.

A parcel tax measure in the Pass area to fund hospital services won Tuesday’s special election, according to final election results.

Medicare officials have quietly posted on the Hospital Compare website a “cost per Medicare beneficiary” score for acute care hospitals. The data shows a 3.1-fold difference in costs across the country.

In 2009 and 2010, total nationwide health care spending grew less than 4 percent per year, the slowest annual pace in more than five decades, according to the latest numbers from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. After years of taking up a growing share of economic activity, health spending held steady in 2010, at 17.9 percent of the gross domestic product. 

HHS released a final rule for a new Medicaid community-based care option, released a proposed rule for the expansion of an existing community- and home-based Medicaid care option and unveiled the participants in a Medicare home healthcare demonstration program.

Hospital mergers and acquisitions have heated up in the first quarter of this year—with no slowdown in deal-making activity expected.

Susan Melvin, D.O., FAAFP–prominent figure in family medicine, medical leadership and physician education and training–has been named the Chief Medical Officer at Long Beach Memorial, among the West’s two largest hospital campuses.

Defense contractors, healthcare groups and associations representing everything from housing to education reported that they were monitoring, and in some cases opposing, the budget cuts that are set to begin next year. The cuts were set in motion by the agreement to lift the debt ceiling last summer.

On Thursday, HHS released a revised draft of its National Action Plan To Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections, which emphasizes the role of health IT in effectively monitoring HAIs, Modern Healthcare reports.

On Wednesday, the state Senate Health Committee approved a bill (SB 1072) that would require screening of newborns for two lysosomal storage diseases, including Krabbe disease, the Ventura County Star reports.

Health care reform is expected to shake up the established business model for hospitals in much of California, resulting in some closures, consolidations, layoffs and ultimately fewer hospital days for patients. But experts say some areas of the state, such as the Inland Empire, could be more insulated from economic pressures.

A new program that will help physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers work together to improve care for people with Medicare is off to a strong start, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
 

What happens when a series of massive earthquakes hits a five-story medical facility with an intensive care unit, operating room and elevator?

Emergency medical helicopters are certainly dramatic (especially on TV shows like “ER” and “Grey’s Anatomy”), but are they really so much better than ambulances that they’re worth the extra cost? A new study says the answer is yes.

Having professional translators in emergency rooms for non-English-speaking patients may help limit potential miscommunications, according to a U.S. study.

Accountable care organizations, heralded as the cornerstone of healthcare reform, remain something of an enigma in the healthcare industry. While ACOs hold the promise of retooling the industry into a leaner, meaner cost-cutting, care-improving machine, there’s still plenty of doubt that ACOs are the way to go, according to results from the 2012 HealthLeaders Media Accountable Care Organization Survey.

Medicare agreed to settle a dispute with about 2,200 hospitals nationwide over a decade-long error in reimbursement rates, offering what could amount to a $3-billion infusion to hospitals already bracing for funding cuts under the federal healthcare law.

Dignity Health appointed Thomas Salerno as the new president of St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach on Wednesday.

The California Department of Health Care Services announced (pdf) that Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and San Mateo counties will be the initial participants in a three-year demonstration project to improve care coordination of people who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program.

If the Affordable Care Act is fully or partially nullified by the US Supreme Court, for-profit hospital operators will face a credit-negative situation as costs increase and profit margins shrink, according to a special comment report from Moody’s Investors Service.

A day in Ventura County’s first pediatric intensive care unit can be a series of rapid-fire emergencies or a lull that has the staff taking inventory of crash carts.

Arrowhead Regional Medical Center Director Patrick Petre has been appointed to the Bureau of Hospitals Executive Committee of the American Osteopathic Association (AOA), one of just three agencies approved by the federal government to provide accreditation to the nation’s hospitals.

Adults who recently gained or lost health insurance were more likely to visit the emergency room than those continuously insured or uninsured, newly published research said.

An old-fashioned checklist has the potential to keep patients with heart failure out of the hospital — and save Medicare billions of dollars, a small new study suggests.

With crowds of demonstrators outside the Supreme Court on Monday, the nine justices inside grilled three attorneys over whether an 1867 federal law prohibits courts from hearing challenges to the new federal requirement that nearly all Americans purchase health insurance.

Desert Valley Hospital has opened its new heart center this week after the state granted a license.

Redlands Community Hospital Foundation has received a grant from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians to help fund the hospital’s purchase of new PET/CT imaging equipment.

Hospitals that want to train and develop advanced-practice nurses have two months to apply for a new demonstration project, the CMS announced Wednesday.

Hospitals across the country can reduce their administrative costs for claims processing by at least $800 million – and possibly much more – if they adopt an open, transparent adjudication process in collaboration with health plans, according to Blue Shield of California and the Hospital Association of Southern California (HASC).

Changes wrought by technology are making an indelible mark in service lines for health systems big and small. This is being reflected in a hospital when a patient is given an iPod with a Pandora app to listen to any music she wants to hear as she waits for an oncological exam (You want Motown, you’ve got it!) and in the surgical suite where physicians use da Vinci robotic systems for minimally invasive procedures, as well as new cloud-based data systems that allow clinicians instantaneous access to a patient’s heart rhythms.

In photographs, Megan Webber’s 5-year-old son Benjamin had a white glow on one eye where other people have that little red dot. It didn’t seem important at first, then her sister remembered seeing a TV show about the glow and eye disease.

Registered nurses at six Tenet Healthcare hospitals in California approved a new four-year contract Monday that gives them a 13.5 percent pay increase over four years, the California Nurses Association/National California Nurses Association Nurses United said Wednesday.

The head of Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center was recognized this week by the National Health Foundation along with the Hospital Association of Southern California.

Two years after its passage, the sweeping health-care overhaul will come before the Supreme Court late this month. The court could strike down some or all of its provisions, including the requirement that nearly all Americans have coverage beginning in 2014.

The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System issued a report suggesting ways that policymakers can alter reimbursement to safety net hospitals once components of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act reduce the number of uninsured and increase the Medicaid rolls.

When the American Hospital Association recently reported that the number of physicians employed by hospitals rose 34% between 2000 and 2010, it was interesting but not exactly earth-shattering news.

The Supreme Court’s consideration of back-to-back health care issues with potentially significant ramifications for California makes it tempting to look for connections.

Moody’s noted that the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission in January recommended a Medicare rate adjustment of 1% for the coming budget cycle, which is less than half the rate of inflation in the overall economy.

Community Hospital, an 80-year old medical facility facing bankruptcy several years ago, has come back and now plans to expand its emergency room to 11 beds, according to Hector Hernandez, administrator of the 81-bed hospital at 2623 Slauson Ave.

Loma Linda University Medical Center-Murrieta has received state approval to expand its heart surgery offerings, the hospital announced Thursday.

Faced with mounting costs and stalled negotiations, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors set a drop-dead deadline for a local labor deal to be reached in a $250 million construction job at the county hospital.

Still overwhelmed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? You know, what the critics call Obamacare? Republicans on the campaign trail are pledging to repeal it, but it won’t be going away soon. So maybe it’s time to buckle down and figure this out.

In the run-up to federal health care reform, leaders of the state Senate and Assembly health committees met Friday in Los Angeles. They discussed how hospitals bill the government and insurers, and the effects of that billing on patient care.

To recognize and celebrate significant contributions and outstanding leadership in health care, Partners in Care Foundation (www.picf.org) has named Dr. David T. Feinberg and the UCLA Health System as the 2012 Mathies Award recipients.

Voice of OC reported last week on the latest in a series of activities involving Orange County’s Medi-Cal managed care agency, CalOptima: that the agency’s board chairman had been accused of “self-dealing,” a possible violation of state law and rules issued by the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). This latest development is also reported in the publication Payers and Providers.

Emergency open-heart surgery will be available without traveling outside the Santa Clarita Valley within a few months as Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital prepares to open a new cardiac operating room.

Although the title of chief nursing informatics officer or nurse informaticist isn’t exactly commonplace, data is increasingly becoming a part of nurses’ day-to-day working lives. Typically the largest employee population, nurses also have the most frequent direct contact with patients. And so getting data into their hands can have a big impact on patient care.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced $83.9 million in grants to help networks of health centers adopt EHRs and other HIT systems. The funds are part of the $2 billion allotted to HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to expand healthcare services to low-income and uninsured individuals through its health center program.

Hospitals were quick to assess a federal payroll tax bill that includes a short-term fix to Medicare’s sustainable growth-rate formula, calling it another instance of cutting payments to providers rather than offering real reforms.

It started in 1952 when one public health nurse set up shop in temporary space provided by the American Red Cross. The idea was to offer compassionate care individuals and families in communities throughout the Inland Valley. 

The Motion Picture and Television Fund (MPTF), the 90-year-old charity supporting Hollywood’s entertainment industry, announced today a first-of-its-kind affiliation with UCLA Health System and its Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital for a geriatric psychiatry unit on MPTF’s Wasserman Campus in Woodland Hills. 

Not-for-profit hospitals average more than 11% of total expenses on benefits to their communities, according to a study sponsored by the American Hospital Association.

HHS’ National Vaccine Advisory Committee approved a recommendation that healthcare employers that haven’t achieved 90% influenza vaccination compliance after following other recommendations to boost flu vaccination rates “strongly consider” an employee requirement for flu vaccination.

In a cool, 18,000-square-foot warehouse tucked in an industrial Sacramento-area neighborhood sits millions of dollars in equipment California leaders hope never to use.

A group of California business organizations today announced the launch of a website to help the state’s business operators understand the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The CMS’ Hospital Compare website has been updated with facility-specific data on central line-associated bloodstream infections, a move the agency says will “hold hospitals accountable for bringing down these rates, saving thousands of lives and millions of dollars.”

The healthcare sector added about 31,000 jobs in January, rising about 0.2% to some 14.2 million workers since December, according to new, preliminary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Many hospitals turn to technology to assist in delivering quality care in a safe manner, and it seems to be paying off. Hospitals & Health Networks’ most recent survey found America’s 100 Most Wired Hospitals and Health Systems enjoyed better outcomes in four key measures. 

The Obama administration blocked an effort by California to charge Medicaid patients for emergency room visits and hospital stays and allow health-care providers to turn away those who couldn’t pay.

The Kaiser strike that promised to be the largest walkout in the company’s history — wasn’t.

When a kid twists her ankle at a Saturday afternoon soccer game, she may wind up in a nearby emergency room sitting next to a stabbing victim.

At issue are reductions in Medicaid reimbursements to pharmacists, physicians, hospitals and other health-care providers that one court has found would result in “serious irreparable injury” to programs serving low-income populations.

St. Mary Medical Center’s new Victorville Oasis complex is on track for a proposed 2016 opening, despite talk that the $260.8 million dollar project had been shelved.

California receives billions of dollars each year through the federal Medicaid program to administer government-subsidized health care called Medi-Cal. To do so, it is governed by a simple legal mandate: Health care services must be accessible to the people who rely on them.

A report from the not-for-profit ECRI Institute, a patient-safety and quality-improvement organization, details social media’s potential as a public-engagement tool for healthcare organizations but warns that risk management is necessary.

Today is the last day to submit applications for the April 1 start date of the CMS’ Medicare Shared Savings Program, the government’s payment and delivery program for accountable care organizations.Read

With boxing-gloved hands, children with cancer and serious blood disorders Thursday ceremoniously swung at a temporary wall of blocks to open the new floor of the Jonathan Jaques Children’s Cancer Center at Miller Children’s Hospital Long Beach on Thursday.

The American Hospital Association has released 25 pages of tips and suggestions for hospital administrators who may be pondering a merger or acquisition.

Redlands Community Hospital has become part of the Inland Empire Health Information Exchange, which will link patient health information to medical providers throughout the area.

More than 300 donors, volunteers, and supporters gathered outside the newest portion of Cottage Hospital to celebrate its long-awaited reconstruction during a dedication ceremony yesterday.

There are signs of a another statewide strike at Kaiser Permanente on January 31.     

U.S. nurses working with electronic health records consistently reported improvements in nursing care and better health outcomes, researchers say.

California Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget for 2012-13 (PDF) would reduce Medicaid revenue for hospitals in the state by $86 million and could cause problems for rural health clinics, seniors and people with disabilities, according to a media statement from C. Duane Dauner, president and CEO of the California Hospital Association.