Minnesota seeks input on pandemic preparations

From Modern Healthcare:
Responding to warnings that a worldwide outbreak of a deadly respiratory virus is unavoidable, Minnesota health officials have invited the public to respond to a specialty panel’s recommendations on how the state should prepare for a severe flu pandemic.
The project was organized by the Minnesota Center for Health Care Ethics and the University [...]

Negative outlook on not-for-profits

From Modern Healthcare:
Fitch Ratings reiterated its negative outlook for not-for-profit hospitals as the nation’s recession and credit crunch drag on. The agency lowered its outlook from stable in early December 2008. Rising unemployment, poorly performing investments, and costly and limited capital continue to stress hospital balance sheets, analysts said. Additionally, not-for-profit hospital credit ratings will [...]

Beyond Fee-for-Service: Paying Doctors for ‘Episodes of Care’

From the Wall Street Journal:
When you pay doctors for every procedure they do, there’s an incentive for unnecessary treatments. There’s a financial reward for fixing problems that better care might have prevented. And there’s no incentive for doctors to prevent complications.
On the other hand, few people want to go back to capitation — paying a [...]

House Stimulus Bill Excludes Critical Access Hospitals from HIT Incentives

Nearly thirteen-hundred Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) that serve over fifteen million Americans in small, mostly rural, communities are excluded from the new health information technology incentives in the proposed Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act (in H.R. 598). The draft language in the Act effectively excludes CAHs from receiving incentives for EMR adoption even though CAHs [...]

The Joint Commission adds patient satisfaction to Quality Check Web site

The Joint Commission last week announced hospitals and consumers can now find patient satisfaction ratings on www.qualitycheck.org, the Web site that evaluates more than 15,000 accredited healthcare organizations based on compliance with the National Patient Safety Goals and National Quality Improvement Goals.
Patient satisfaction ratings are based on measurements including communication with doctors, communication with nurses, [...]

Using information from Google when credentialing medical staff applicants

Without a doubt, Google and other search engines have transformed the way credentialers verify medical staff applicants’ histories. Not only can search engines, including the online Credentialing and Privileging Desktop Reference, help you find a missing medical school fax number, some can also reveal myriad details about a physician’s past personal or professional life. Work-related [...]

States Wrestle Over Medicaid Funds in Stimulus Package

From the Wall Street Journal Health Blog:
The $819 billion economic stimulus package now heads to the Senate after passing the House in a 244-188 vote, without a single Republican saying “yea.” Now it heads to the Senate, where one of the sticking points is expected to be how funds for Medicaid will be distributed.
The WSJ [...]

C Difficile in Exam Rooms, on Equipment…

From Science Direct:
Background
Numerous studies have demonstrated that environmental surfaces in the rooms of patients with Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) are often contaminated with spores. However, less information is available regarding the frequency of contamination of environmental surfaces outside of CDI isolation rooms.
Methods
We performed a point-prevalence culture survey for C difficile in rooms of patients not [...]

House passes stimulus bill

From Modern Physician:
he Democratic-controlled House approved an $819 billion stimulus bill Wednesday night with spending increases and tax cuts at the heart of the young administration’s plan to revive a badly ailing economy, including more than $80 billion for state Medicaid budgets and more than $20 billion to help doctors and hospitals adopt health information [...]

Charity Care and Non-Profit Status

From the Wall Street Health Blog:
In the latest round of the fight over whether nonprofit hospitals provide enough charity care to justify their tax exemptions, a big Chicago hospital operator is settling a class action suit over what it has charged the uninsured.
Advocate Health Care, which operates a bunch of hospitals in the Chicago area, [...]