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Tag: Hospitals

For Hospitals, Sleep And Patient Satisfaction May Go Hand In Hand

It’s a common complaint — if you spend a night in the hospital, you probably won’t get much sleep.

There’s the noise. There’s the bright fluorescent hallway light. And there’s the unending barrage of nighttime interruptions: vitals checks, medication administration, blood draws and the rest.

Peter Ubel, a physician and a professor at Duke University’s business school, has studied the rational and irrational forces that affect health. But he was surprised when hospitalized at Duke in 2013 to get a small tumor removed at how difficult it was to sleep. “There was no coordination,” he said. “One person would be in charge of measuring my blood pressure. Another would come in when the alarm went off, and they never thought, ‘Gee if the alarm goes off, I should also do blood pressure.’”

“From a patient perspective,” he added, “you’re sitting there going, ‘What the heck?’”

As hospitals chase better patient ratings and health outcomes, an increasing number are rethinking how they function at night — in some cases reducing nighttime check-ins or trying to better coordinate medicines — so that more patients can sleep relatively uninterrupted.

Read the full article here.

Contact Steven G. Cosby, MHSA, Group Health Insurance Broker and Agent with Cosby Insurance Group, with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

Cosby Insurance Group Warrenton Health Insurance Broker and Agent

Interest Surges in Medicare Bundled-Payment Initiative

Medicare will nearly triple the number of hospitals and medical groups that are candidates to test bundled payments, one of the health reform law’s efforts to revamp healthcare financing.
The CMS announced it will add roughly 4,100 providers to about 2,400 already exploring the possible use of bundled payments for some or all of four dozen medical conditions and procedures, such as diabetes, joint replacements and pacemaker implants. Providers have to apply to become candidates.

These roughly 6,500 candidates will analyze Medicare spending data to decide whether or not to enter into bundled-payment contracts, which must reduce Medicare costs by 2% to 3.5% before providers are rewarded, with some exceptions.

Medicare launched the payment bundles in January 2013 under the healthcare reform law So far, the CMS has signed 243 providers to bundled-payment contracts, which began in October and January.

Read the full article here.

Contact Steven Cosby with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

BREAKING: FTC Wins Appeal in ProMedica Case

The Federal Trade Commission extended its recent winning streak in healthcare cases Tuesday when a federal appeals court agreed that a 2010 hospital acquisition by Ohio’s ProMedica system was illegal.

In a 22-page opinion, a unanimous panel of judges at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati wrote that the FTC correctly decided that Toledo-based ProMedica was extremely likely to illegally increase prices after buying the suburban St. Luke’s Hospital in Maumee, a well-to-do corner of Lucas County, Ohio.

The court upheld an earlier order from the FTC that ProMedica must divest St. Luke’s to another buyer. The judges ruled none of ProMedica’s arguments against the order were strong enough to overturn it.

“We are extremely disappointed by today’s decision and intend to appeal,” ProMedica said in a statement. “We are committed to exhausting all of our legal options.”

The decision has been closely watched because it’s likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in an era when government regulators including the FTC are taking an increasingly aggressive stance in hospital-merger cases.

Read the full report here.

Contact Steven Cosby with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

BREAKING: FTC Wins Appeal in ProMedica Case

The Federal Trade Commission extended its recent winning streak in healthcare cases Tuesday when a federal appeals court agreed that a 2010 hospital acquisition by Ohio’s ProMedica system was illegal.

In a 22-page opinion, a unanimous panel of judges at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati wrote that the FTC correctly decided that Toledo-based ProMedica was extremely likely to illegally increase prices after buying the suburban St. Luke’s Hospital in Maumee, a well-to-do corner of Lucas County, Ohio.

The court upheld an earlier order from the FTC that ProMedica must divest St. Luke’s to another buyer. The judges ruled none of ProMedica’s arguments against the order were strong enough to overturn it.

“We are extremely disappointed by today’s decision and intend to appeal,” ProMedica said in a statement. “We are committed to exhausting all of our legal options.”

The decision has been closely watched because it’s likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in an era when government regulators including the FTC are taking an increasingly aggressive stance in hospital-merger cases.

Read the full report here.

Contact Steven Cosby with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.