Modern Healthcare articles from August 2006

Modern Healthcare archives from August 2006

Indiana to cultivate patient data; New program allows participants to access records.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Andis Robeznieks The Indiana Health Information Exchange launched a new program, Quality Health First of Indiana, that combines medical- and drug-claims data from participating health plans with patient prescription-drug data, and...

Rural areas cool to HCA; Town opposes ending inpatient services at hospital.(The Week In Healthcare)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Vince Galloro It's no wonder HCA announced more than a year ago that it was shedding 10 small hospitals in rural markets. The company hasn't been getting a neighborly greeting in Mayberry, R.F.D., lately. The Nashville-based...

Surgeon gen. overshadowed.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Jessica Zigmond Despite his work on the harmful effects of secondhand smoke and healthcare disparities, Richard Carmona will likely be remembered as the U.S. surgeon general who served when America sharpened its focus on national...

Congress: What standards? Health IT bill would curb some HHS regulations.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Matthew DoBias New federal regulations released by HHS to put e-prescribing tools and electronic health records into the hands of physicians more rapidly could run broadside into a health information technology bill that-as...

The limits of technology; Far from a panacea, IT is merely a tool for solving problems.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Susan Horn A new study in the American Journal of Managed Care dashes hopes that hot-ticket information technologies such as computerized physician order entry will revolutionize everyday clinical care. The report, by Ted Palen of...

Age-old sales lessons; New book details history that is still relevant to today's marketplace.(Lauer's Letter)(Letter to the editor)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Charles S. Lauer, Vice President-Publishing/Editorial Director The selling profession is a complicated business, and it is often misunderstood. Trying to make sense out of why people buy from one organization as opposed to another...

Hospital infection issue sparks unusual patient protest in Ky.
August 7, 2006... Ask hospital executives what keeps them up at night, and it's highly unlikely they could conjure up a "Twilight Zone'' scenario as disturbing as this one: While local television cameras capture the scene for the 6 p.m. news, dozens of former...

On the move...(appointment)
August 7, 2006... HOSPITALS, SYSTEMS Methodist Health System, Dallas, named Stephen Mansfield as its next president and CEO, and he will succeed Howard Chase, 68, who is retiring from the three-hospital system on Jan. 1, 2007. Mansfield, 53, currently...

Premier gets new D.C. chief.(appointment of Blair Childs)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Joseph Mantone Premier, the San Diego-based not-for-profit hospital alliance, has hired a veteran healthcare policy advocate to ramp up its Washington lobbying presence. Blair Childs, 50, officially took over last week as the...

HIPAA, 10 years after; With the act now a decade old, experts weigh in on its triumphs and failings.(Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Joseph Conn Ten years ago this month, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act dramatically changed the U.S. healthcare landscape, in some ways for the better and in some ways for the worse, industry experts contend....

Surgical Care founder dies.(Obituary)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... * E. Timothy Geary, 55, the co-founder, chairman, president and CEO of National Surgical Care, Chicago, died July 16 of complications from a brain tumor that was diagnosed in late May. Geary and longtime associate Richard Pence founded National...

HELP WANTED; Benefits include an idyllic rural setting, a friendly community and some assistance paying off those hefty medical school loans.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Jessica Zigmond As the demand for qualified physicians and other healthcare professionals in rural communities outweighs supply, local leaders continue to seek solutions. Rural rotation programs during medical school and residency...

Charity-care wrangling; Ohio, Wis. unveil separate payment strategies.(The Week In Healthcare)(Jim Petro- state attorney general)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Mark Taylor Charity care-how it is defined, provided and reported-continues to entangle hospitals, their associations and the state officials regulating tax-exempt organizations. Just last month, new rules for treatment of...

Briefly: Tenn. hospital to expand ER.(Regional Medical Center)(electronic medical records)(CMS)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Wellmont Bristol (Tenn.) Regional Medical Center received state certificate-of-need approval to more than double the size of the hospital's emergency department. The Tennessee Health Services and Development Agency approved a $13.8 million...

Survey says: Grassley steamed; 35 not-for-profits opt out of voluntary GAO comp study.(The Week In Healthcare)(Chuck Grassley)(Government Accountability Office)(Survey)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Melanie Evans Despite assertions from the industry that oversight of executive pay, bonuses and perks appears to have improved among not-for-profit health systems, based on recently released survey results, a key congressional...

Michigan Medical restructures leadership.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Michigan Medical, a Grand Rapids-based physician group, named Ted Inman, vice president of operations and general counsel, its new chief executive officer. Former CEO James Buzzitta, M.D., will serve as board chairman and managing shareholder....

Not-for-profits prosper; Moody's annual review shows more upgrades, profit.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Cinda Becker How good a year was 2005 for not-for-profit hospitals? Market conditions were so favorable to the sector that any hospital that performed poorly financially should probably do some serious soul-searching about the...

Bad medicine; Big Pharma's cash injections lead to poor ethical outcomes.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Todd Sloane, Assistant Managing Editor/Op-Ed During a recent visit to a busy urban medical group office, I spent an hour and a half in a waiting room. During that time, no fewer than six drug salespeople came and went. I thought I...

Easing the impact; CMS blunts effect of new inpatient PPS.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Jennifer Lubell The biggest changes in 20 years to Medicare's system for paying hospitals for inpatient care are expected to reap modest benefits to most hospitals instead of producing the clear-cut winners and losers that were...

Ripe for change: study; Commonwealth Fund develops healthcare `scorecard'.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Michael Romano The nation's costly healthcare system is a little like a vintage sports car with some serious mechanical problems: Those expensive parts work fine at times, but there's a lot about the chassis and engine that needs...

Investment tactics improve; But market forces reduce returns for not-for-profits.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Cinda Becker Not-for-profit healthcare organizations are historically risk-averse when it comes to investing hard-earned income, but the laggardly sector is starting to catch up with the rest of the tax-exempt world. The...

Transparency has its limits; Questions arise about why the transparency-preaching Blues association is getting quiet about its members' fiscal results.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Laura B. Benko The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association touted its commitment to healthcare transparency last week when it unveiled what it called the nation's largest healthcare information resource, designed to provide a wealth...

Physicians, executives must converse: study.
August 7, 2006... A new national study reiterates a widely accepted maxim: communication is one of the keys to any good relationship-especially those involving hospital administrators and physicians. These sometimes "volatile" relationships call for added focus...

Physician use of electronic records.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Despite progress in boosting the number of office-based physicians' use of electronic medical records, there is still a long way to go, according to a recent report on data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the...

Corrections & Clarifications.(Corrections)
August 7, 2006... A photo of Mark Leavitt, chairman of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology, mistakenly ran with an Outlier item on HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt (July 31, p. 36).

By The Numbers.(Working-age African-Americans and Hispanics are uninsured )(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Working-age African-Americans and Hispanics in the U.S. are uninsured at 1.5 times and three times greater rates, respectively, than working-age whites, according to a Commonwealth Fund issue brief. The estimates were based on a 2005 survey of...

Outpatient care arrives.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Thirty years ago, outpatient care was still a relatively new concept. According to the Foundation for Ambulatory Surgery in America, the first ambulatory surgery center was established in 1970, and there were fewer than 100 ASCs nationwide by...

Growth in home care.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... While there's been a fair amount of debate over the consequences stemming from the aging baby boomer generation, it seems certain that hospice and home-care services will continue to grow. St. Christopher's Hospice in London, the first such...

Clinton reform plan.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Comprehensive healthcare reform was one of the defining issues of Bill Clinton's presidency, and its dramatic failure in late 1994 has shaped the debate over how to expand Americans' access to healthcare ever since. In 1993, after...

The stem-cell debate.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Ethical disputes make the future of stem-cell research murky, but there's no question it will proceed. Proponents say it could lead to breakthroughs as spectacular as cures for Parkinson's disease and diabetes, and the ability to grow new...

... and Hillary.
August 7, 2006... In January 1993, during his first week in office, President Bill Clinton appointed his wife to chair the White House Task Force on National Health Care Reform. More than a decade after her health reform plan went down in flames, Hillary Rodham...

Hillary Rodham Clinton.
August 7, 2006... Since her national healthcare reform plan failed 12 years ago, Hillary Rodham Clinton has hardly shied away from healthcare issues, although she says she has learned from experience to push for incremental gains rather than sweeping change. ...

Bionics now nonfiction.(Disease/Disorder overview)
August 7, 2006... Mention the science of bionics and most people of a certain age will remember episodes of "The Six Million Dollar Man,'' the popular TV series that aired from 1974-1978. Crediting advances in medical technology, Col. Steve Austin, TV's...

Cost spiral.(30 Events/Innovations)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... By almost any measure, the rise in healthcare costs has been relentless, and demographics do not indicate the problem will get better anytime soon. Back in 1970, the total annual healthcare tab totaled roughly $73 billion, a figure that...

From the Modern Healthcare archives.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... There is now hard evidence that programs that include payment incentives push providers to adhere to standards of care and improve patient safety. Unfortunately, it seems that the extra cash is going to the highest-performing providers, while...

Minimalized surgery.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... In the past 30 years, minimalism has transformed the art of surgery. With less cutting, less blood, fewer stitches, shorter recovery time and fewer complications, minimally invasive surgery offers huge advantages to patients. It's been a mixed...

Grassley: Watchdog.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa farmer first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1980, has been most influential through his 1986 modernization of the False Claims Act, which originally targeted military waste but is now used to fight fraud against the...

JCAHO's next leader.(Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations' next president faces a potentially bruising campaign to convince critics and supporters of its value and autonomy. The Oakbrook, Ill.-based not-for-profit faces challenges...

Mike Leavitt.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... As a former governor of Utah and former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, 55, has played his hand at many types of leadership roles in his long career as politician and policymaker. However, in his...

Community-benefits debate.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Rising U.S. healthcare costs, along with the steady growth of consumer-driven healthcare, make it unlikely that not-for-profit hospitals will escape continuing debate over their charity-care, billing and collection policies. As employers push a...

Sen. Barack Obama.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... He's the junior senator from Illinois and less than two years into his first term, but Barack Obama's unusual name is now easily recognizable nationally and internationally. In fact, despite his frequent denials, there's even continuing...

Eliot Spitzer.
August 7, 2006... Eliot Spitzer can't seem to help himself. The two-term New York attorney general now running for governor makes headlines wherever he goes. And increasingly they've come at the expense of hospitals and other healthcare organizations. The...

A universal solution.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Earlier this year, after a far-reaching healthcare discussion with more than 10,000 rank-and-file Americans, a little-known but congressionally mandated group released a preliminary report that raised eyebrows in Washington. In...

Provider HMOs.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Provider-sponsored health plans came on like a gold rush but never quite panned out. The concept of provider-owned HMOs emerged in the '80s, largely in reaction to the tightening grip of managed care. By offering their own insurance...

Frist Sr.: HCA builder.(30 People From The Past)(In memoriam)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Thomas Frist Sr. is best-known as a co-founder of the Hospital Corporation of America, but he preferred to be known as a physician. He tended to seven Tennessee governors in a practice spanning 50 years, and wrote to his grandchildren in 1997:...

Frist Jr.: HCA leader.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Thomas Frist Jr. doesn't consider himself the father of investor-owned hospitals. Frist reserves that designation for his father, the late Thomas Frist Sr., whom the son called "a true visionary'' in a recent interview. But whether you...

For-profits' reign.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Are for-profit hospitals on an unstoppable march toward eventual industry domination? Thomas Frist Jr., co-founder of investor-owned linchpin HCA (See related story, p. 12), doesn't think that investor-owned hospitals are poised to...

From the Modern Healthcare archives.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... President Clinton last week demanded swift action from healthcare providers and government officials to improve patient safety at the nation's hospitals. Clinton's efforts follow an Institute of Medicine report that said medical errors by...

Eric Saff.(30 People For The Future)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Eric Saff takes patient safety personally. A medical error led to the death of his father when Saff was only 9 years old and, more recently, his mother experienced three nearly fatal medical accidents. As chief information officer and chief...

Breaux: Deal broker.(resignation of John Breaux )(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... When John Breaux retired from the Senate last year, the moderate Democrat from Louisiana had become well-known for his ability to negotiate across party lines. During Breaux's 32 years in Congress, which began when he was elected to the House...

From the Modern Healthcare archives.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... In disparaging health reform proposals from Democratic presidential candidates and rivals in Congress, (President George H.W.) Bush has called them big-government nationalized health insurance plans. He contends they would cost billions in new...

Gordon Schiff.
August 7, 2006... Gordon Schiff, director of clinical quality research and improvement at Chicago's 460-bed John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, talks a lot about balancing acts. Where other patient safety and healthcare quality improvement experts drone...

Patient safety first.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Lucian Leape, father of the patient-safety movement, describes the growth of the movement by saying it's gone from "Isn't this awful?'' to "How do we change things?'' (See story, p. 48). While dithering continues over the toll medical errors...

Alternative medicine.(30 Events/Innovations)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Although alternative medicine clearly existed long before "traditional'' medicine, its popularity in the U.S. was acknowledged by medical professionals only about a decade ago or so, when they began studying patient behavior to try to head off...

Gov. Mitt Romney.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has long been expected to make a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Officially, Romney's camp is only saying he won't run for re-election as governor when his term ends in January 2007 and...

Carter: Universal hopes.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... To establish a comprehensive national health program which will make adequate healthcare a right for all people, be uniform in scope, and preserve the private relationship between doctor and patient.'' Such were the ambitious goals of...

Computers in healthcare.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... While there's still a long way to go before achieving the goal of a fully electronic and interoperable system of healthcare record-keeping, a lot of progress has been made over the past 30 years, and like any journey of that duration, there...

Brailer: First health IT czar.
August 7, 2006... It's too early to tell whether the regime of physician informaticist David Brailer as the nation's first healthcare information technology czar will be viewed as a watershed or a blip in IT history. During his tenure as head of HHS' Office...

Cancer vaccines advancing.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Cancer vaccines have seemed like medicine's Holy Grail: much discussed, much sought after, but always elusive. After decades of failed attempts, some vaccines are now advancing through clinical trials. A new vaccine against human...

From the Modern Healthcare archives.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Congress should force more not-for-profit hospitals that aren't providing sufficient charity care or community service to do so, a new congressional study said. That step is needed because hospitals are claiming that they provide uncompensated...

Biologics: Designer drugs.(Disease/Disorder overview)
August 7, 2006... The word "biologics'' used to refer to human blood products, and later vaccines and insulin. Now the biopharmaceutical market is teeming with synthetically produced clotting factors, enzymes, gene therapy products, growth factors and, perhaps...

Advent of biotech.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... While humans have been having other organisms do their bidding for millennia (think of yeast in bread and beer, or the discovery of penicillin), it wasn't until scientists started messing directly with genetic material that things took off in...

Decoding the genome.(30 Events/Innovations)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... The sequencing of the human genome-figuring out the exact order of the billions of amino acid pairs in human chromosomes-ranks as the one of the most spectacular achievements in the history of science. It's the key to unlocking the causes and...

Genetic testing.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Sequencing the human genome was only the first step. Now comes the hard part: figuring out which bits of DNA correspond to which diseases, determining exactly how they work, and establishing the best ways to thwart their natural tendencies (See...

Rod Blagojevich.
August 7, 2006... Healthcare policy has taken center stage in the administration of Illinois' Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, 49, a first-termer who faces a tough re-election fight this fall. The governor's online biography mentions four healthcare-related...

Implementing imaging.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... In imaging's infancy (around 1900), all that existed was the X-ray. In fact, it was the only form of medical imaging available for decades. Ultrasound-imaging by bouncing sound waves off the object under examination-came along in the '60s. ...

Imaging gets clearer.(30 Trends/Innovations)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... It may seem like every cranny in the body can be imaged today, but some mysteries remain. And there's room for improvement in existing technologies, as anyone who has had a mammogram or a colonoscopy can attest. The next 30 years are likely to...

Parker: Trailblazer.(Intermountain Healthcare)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... In 1974, the Mormon church decided to divest its 15-hospital system, turning the network into its own not-for-profit organization and spinning off the entire enterprise free of charge. That new organization would become Intermountain...

David Cutler.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... In the coming years, U.S. policymakers--continuing their struggle to rein in healthcare costs and rising numbers of uninsured and underinsured--are likely to turn to the work of David Cutler, a 41-year-old professor of applied economics and...

Bush I: ADA booster.
August 7, 2006... He might be remembered best for breaking his pledge to not raise taxes, but former President George H.W. Bush also made his mark in the healthcare arena, most notably in championing the Americans with Disabilities Act. Signed into law on...

Alan Levine.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... It's not too hard to believe that Medicaid, the safety net insurer for low-income and disabled patients, promises to strain state budgets and tax lawmakers' creativity for years to come. Budget woes have sent states such as Ohio and Tennessee...

Reagan: Changed Medicare.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... President Ronald Reagan's two terms included some key healthcare policy changes, especially in Medicare. One plan, which completely overhauled how the program is administered, remains in effect today. Another suffered a quick demise. The...

Quest for better quality.
August 7, 2006... Seven years ago, the Institute of Medicine shook the healthcare industry with its report on medical errors, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Its premise, that preventable medical errors kill tens of thousands people in hospitals...

Rep. Bobby Jindal.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Bobby Jindal, a freshman Republican congressman from Louisiana, has been afforded more respect on healthcare issues than most newcomers in Congress. Before heading to Capitol Hill, Jindal was already known as being a healthcare whiz kid. He had...

From the Modern Healthcare archives.(healthcare business forecast for a baby boomer )(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Increasingly, many observers are saying the forecast for a (baby) boomer bonanza in healthcare business could turn into a bust. There's no disputing that radical breakthroughs in medical technology are rapidly turning acute and often deadly...

Kennedy: Champion.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... During more than 40 years on Capitol Hill, Sen. Edward Kennedy has sponsored or strongly influenced a raft of healthcare bills. First elected to the Senate in 1962, the Massachusetts Democrat has been credited with helping create the...

AIDS/HIV pandemic.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... A quarter-century ago, the first AIDS patient was diagnosed. Although powerful medications to combat the disease have been developed since then, AIDS and HIV, the virus that causes the disease, continue to haunt the globe. The AIDS...

Waxman: Pushing for progress.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... From his stronghold as the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, Henry Waxman of California, now in his 16th term in Congress, has fired off numerous reports lambasting the Bush administration's healthcare policies. ...

Unionization in healthcare.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Although organized labor has receded in most industries, unions have picked up momentum in healthcare, which some attribute to upheaval in healthcare markets because of cost containment and staff shortages. Organized labor won 71% of...

Still going strong; 30 years of giving it to you straight.(From the Editor)(Editorial)
August 7, 2006... Byline: David Burda, Editor Welcome to Modern Healthcare's 30th anniversary issue. I'm proud to say I've been with the magazine for nearly two-thirds of that time. On Sept. 8, 2006, I will mark my 19th year: nine as a reporter, five as...

Bigger role for nanotech.(Nanotechnology umbrella term for a number of technologies)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Nanotechnology-an umbrella term for a number of technologies that exploit the special properties of matter at very small scales (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, and nanotechnology is anything that works with dimensions 100 nanometers...

From the Modern Healthcare archives.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... By choosing (Richard) Umbdenstock (as the AHA's next chief), the AHA pulled off the ultimate inside job, further solidifying the hospital industry's reputation as an "old boy's network.'' According to the AHA, no one else was considered or...

Managed-care change.(30 Events/Innovations)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Over the past 20 years, managed care has gone from industry hero to industry villain and then to healthcare has-been. In the mid- to late '80s, employers turned to managed care in droves, desperate to stave off fast-rising medical costs....

Hospitals of the future.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... The hospital of tomorrow may look a lot like the hospital of today, but it almost certainly will be cleaner, safer, quieter and more environmentally friendly as planners build evidence-based design in their plans for the future. A parallel...