Healthcare CFOs Sing Reform Blues

Healthcare CFOs Sing Reform Blues

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is designed, in part, to provide more patients with health insurance through expanded Medicaid eligibility and the introduction of government-run health insurance exchanges that will allow low-income individuals to purchase medical coverage at a subsidized rate.

The goals include improving access to care for this segment of the population and reducing the amount of uncompensated care provided by the nation's hospitals. While this sounds good on paper, many hospital finance administrators are not convinced that the PPACA will benefit providers and are instead bracing to take a hit to the revenue cycle.

http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/FIN-294282/Healthcare-CFOs-Sing-Reform-Blues?goback=%2Egde_132131_member_259115839

Ready for a Crisis, and Ready to Flex

Ready for a Crisis, and Ready to Flex

Do hospitals that treat more low-income, ethnically diverse patients with multiple comorbidities have a tougher time getting good patient experience scores than other hospitals, as some organizations contend?

And if so, should those hospitals merit an adjustment for socioeconomic status or payer mix, especially when millions in value-based purchasing incentive pay is now at stake?

Safety-net advocacy groups say the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems surveys should be adjusted for race, ethnicity, income, and health literacy as well as insurance status because HCAHPS misses a measure of hospital cultural competence.

But to date, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has disagreed, arguing that existing adjustments—such as for age, education, and the patient's primary language—are adequate.

As Hospital Hiring Slips, Robot Workers Lurk

As Hospital Hiring Slips, Robot Workers Lurk

he government's healthcare cost reduction focus is having an effect on jobs:

• Ambulatory care services (making up for hospitals' slowdown in job creation) created 15,300 additional jobs, more than 12% increase since last month.
• Outpatient care services grew almost four times as quickly in May than April, creating 3,500 additional jobs.
• Physician's offices created 13% less jobs.
• Home health care services stayed approximately the same since April.
• Nursing and residential care services also slowed down, by 52% since last month. 
• Healthcare as a whole added 11,000 additional jobs from April to May.

Why medications cause more adverse effects is seniors

The main reason for this is, as we grow older our major organs such liver and kidney function less efficiently. The liver is the major organ for metabolism and kidney is major organ for excretion of drugs from our body. While, other organs being the lungs and skin, and colon through feces. The physicians need to be careful in prescribing the medications, and it would be better if the peak level in the blood and the organs metabolizing and excreting the medications are not the same if possible. At least the timing of medication should be such that two drugs have the same possible side-effect and the same organ of metabolism be prescribed at different timings of the day. Most physicians are not very proficient in deciding these factors. The ObamaCare EHR has the drug-drug interaction and drug-allergy space, which is very helpful. The Stage 2 EHR would also include Data Analytics and Clinical Support so these physicians would be prevented from defaulting the system.

Patient Satisfaction

What we need to do improve patient satisfaction, improve quality or cost? There are various researches done on this topic to find out the right cause. The healthcare analytics vary in opinions about this.

Published on Feb 13, 2012 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, by Joshua Fenton, an article, PATIENT SATISFACTION LINKED TO HIGHER HEALTHCARE EXPENSES AND MORTALITY, which described a study conducted by a team of UC Davis researchers, Sacramento, Ca.  "Patients should be satisfied with their physicians, but ideally it's because their physicians guide them toward the best care and not merely because their physicians provide tests or treatments that may do more harm than good," said Fenton.

In another article by Bhanu Prakash, in the Sep-Dec 2010 archive of PMC, “PATIENT SATISFACTION” comments, Patient satisfaction is an important and commonly used indicator for measuring the quality in health care. Patient satisfaction affects clinical outcomes, patient retention, and medical malpractice claims. It affects the timely, efficient, and patient-centered delivery of quality health care. Patient satisfaction is thus a proxy but a very effective indicator to measure the success of doctors and hospitals”.

There are certain ways and strategies by which we can improve patient satisfaction as suggested by Parakash (2010) which are deduced by the study conclusion:

1.     Improved patient retention - according to the Technical Assistant Research Programs (TARPs), if we satisfy one customer, the information reaches four others. So, if we annoy one customer, we will have to satisfy three other patients just to stay even. “Change the reference number.”

2.     They are less vulnerable to price wars. There is sufficient evidence to prove that organizations with high customer loyalty can command a higher price without losing their profit or market share. In fact, in a study conducted in no-for-profit Hospitals of America, nearly 70% of patients were willing to pay more money if they had to consult a quality physician of their choice.

3.     Increased staff morale with reduced staff turnover also leads to increased productivity

4.     Reduced risk of malpractice suits – an inverse correlation has been reported for patient satisfaction rates and medical malpractice suits (Poulas, Brodell, Mostow, (2010).

5.     Accreditation issues – it is now universally accepted that various accreditation agencies like International Organization for Standardization (ISO), National Accreditation Board for Hospitals (NABH), Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), etc., all focus on quality service issues (JCAHO Manual, 1992.)

6.     Increased personal and professional satisfaction - patients who improve with our care definitely make us happier (Foot, 2003). The happier the doctor, the happier will be the patients.

7.     Doctors may agree to patient requests for services to increase patient satisfaction