Healthcare Strategic Management articles from April 2001

Healthcare Strategic Management archives from April 2001

Market Memo: Hospitalist's leadership key to IOM's 21st Century aims.(hospitals may use Institute of Medicine report to get more funding)
April 1, 2001... During the next five to 10 years, health care strategists will use the Institute of Medicine's report, Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, to convince the public, Congress, the states and employers to spend...

Winning higher rates will be harder this year.(hospitals efforts to gain higher prices in managed care contracts may be fruitless)
April 1, 2001... Renegotiating managed care contracts will be tougher for hospitals in 2001. After a year or two of generally successfully demanding and getting more money out of payers, hospitals that don't have natural monopolies will be on the defensive...

Baylor Medical Center at Grapevine plans $48 million tower; cost is $552 per sq. ft.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2001... Baylor Health Care System and Baylor Medical Center at Grapevine, Texas,announced a $48 million five-story patient tower expansion that will nearly double the number of licensed patient beds at the medical center from 104 beds to 197. The...

Planning pays off for Healthsouth; earnings rise 26% in fourth quarter of 2000.(Healthsouth Corp.)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2001... Healthsouth Corp., the Birmingham, Ala.-based outpatient surgery, diagnostic center and rehab center operator, went into 2000 with a plan to improve operations, and it did. In its 1999 annual report, Richard M. Scrushy, chairman and CEO, said...

Province Healthcare plans to acquire two to four non-urban hospitals, hike earnings 25%.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2001... Province Healthcare Company, the Brentwood, Tenn.-based operator of 54 owned, leased and managed "non-urban" hospitals plans to acquire two to four more hospitals in 2001. Under new Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations,...

Health care systems outsource Medicare disproportionate share claims processing.(St. Barnabas Health Care System, St. Joseph Hospital Health Center)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... Health Management Systems, Inc. announced that St. Barnabas Health Care System, Livingston, New Jersey, and St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center, Syracuse, NY, have purchased Medicare Disproportionate Share claiming and reimbursement services...

Vascular center offers multidisciplinary approach to care and treatment.(HealthEast Vascular Center)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... HealthEast Care System, St. Paul, Minn., opened a multidisciplinary vascular center last month. Each HealthEast Vascular Center patient will have a physician and case manager, who coordinates the patient's care. "Vascular disease patients often...

23% of COPD patients say the disease makes them an invalid.(chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2001... Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) affects twice as many Americans as diabetes and is the nation's fourth leading cause of death, according to the American Lung Assn. COPD includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis that decreases...

92% of states don't screen newborns for disorders; March of Dimes recommends eight bloodspot tests.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2001... Forty-seven states did not conduct the panel of newborn screening bloodspot tests recommended by the March of Dimes, according to state data published by the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation. The tests screen the blood of newborns for...

Kaiser rejoins ranks of profitable HMOs and hospital chains; income hits $584 million.(Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc.)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2001... Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., Kaiser Foundation Hospitals (KFHP/H), Oakland, Calif., and their subsidiaries reported net income of $584 million and operating income of $562 million on revenues of $17.7 billion for the year ended December...

VHA study reinforces Institute of Medicine Emphasis on clinical improvement.(VHA Inc.'s Consumer Demand for Clinical Quality: The Giant Awakens)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... Consumers would like more information about the scientifically based treatment protocols hospitals and doctors should be following and that they would use information about protocol compliance rates to help them select providers, according to a...

9,908 sites in the U. S. perform about 44 million mammograms per year.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2001... An estimated 44.5 million mammography procedures were performed at 9,908 registered mammography sites in 2000. The number of procedures rose an estimated 6% last year, according to a report prepared by IMV Medical Information Division Inc....

MICROMEDEX introduces a new clinical database on the use of alternative medicine.(Micromedex Inc.)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... MICROMEDEX, Greenwood Village, Colo. a division of Thomson Healthcare, has released AltMedDex[TM] Protocols -- a new clinical database for healthcare practitioners on the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies. The...

Pharmacoeconomics study helps drug firms sell hospitals on putting drugs on formularies.(report by Decision Resources Inc.)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... Hospitals trying to control how pharmaceutical companies market drugs to their drug forumulary committees may want to take a look at a study offered to the drug companies by Decision Resources, Inc., Waltham, Mass. Its report, "Leveraging...

DiseaseDynamics[TM] allows health plans to benchmark metrics in specific diseases.(PharMetrics Inc.)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2001... PharMetrics Inc., Boston, a provider of patient level health care data to the managed care and bio-pharmaceutical industries, introduced product line, DiseaseDynamics[TM]). The new software tool will allow health plans to monitor specific...

Cedars-Sinai uses physician education and task forces to contain soaring drug costs.
April 1, 2001... Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, uses literature reviews, task forces and physician educational efforts to help ensure that the use of high-cost drugs is appropriate and cost effective. Writing in the American Journal of Health...

Medical device companies are evaluating their emerging e-commerce strategies.
April 1, 2001... "With internet and computer industry stocks in the tank, medical device makers and distributors are wondering about the future of e-commerce for the health care industry's supply chain," writes Donald E. L. Johnson in the March issue of Health...

Hospital joins with Saks to market its services to breast cancer patients.(North Memorial Medical Center, Saks Inc.)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2001... North Memorial Medical Center, Robbinsdale, Minn., joined forces with the Council of Fashion Designers and Saks in their national "Fashion Targets Breast Cancer" event, according to the March-April Profiles in Healthcare Marketing. The event...

Hospitals deal with blood shortages and blood filtration equipment and supply costs.
April 1, 2001... "Blood, long a mainstay of the hospital supply chain because of its lifesaving role in surgery, is becoming more of an economic issue, thanks to new technologies and social debates that are changing its role--and cost--in treatment," according...

Managed care has had little impact on how resources are spent on high-cost illnesses.
April 1, 2001... Five percent of the population accounts for 55% of health expenditures and the top 10% account for 69%, according to the March-April 2001 Health Affairs. "The concentration of healthcare expenditures, revisited," by Marc L. Berk and Alan...

Developing Internet strategies is a top priority for hospital systems.(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2001... Developing an Internet strategy is a top priority in health care, according to a study sponsored by Pfizer Health Solutions, a subsidiary of Pfizer Inc. Responding organizations uniformly agreed with the importance of a written, thoughtful...

MedPAC's report to Congress paints a better profit picture for hospitals.(Medicare Payment Advisory Commission)(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2001... Strategic planning requires anticipating changes in resources, especially revenues from major payers. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission's (MedPAC) 217-page March 2001 Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy lays out the economic...

Web-based data analysis tools help providers, MCOs contain costs.(managed care organizations benefit from W3 Health Corp.'s products and services)
April 1, 2001... Integrated health care delivery networks (IDN) are investing in Web-accessible data mining technology that will give their market analysts, executives, pharmacists and physicians the ability to negotiate better managed care contracts, contain...

IOM committee on quality outlines its aims and `rules' for health care.
April 1, 2001... Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, a report published last month by the Institute of Medicine's Committee on the Quality of Health Care in America "proposes six aims for improvement to address key dimensions...