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September 2009
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Volume 3, Issue 16
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InforMed Society
Offical E-Newsletter of the Medical Society
Keeping you InforMed about the latest health care news!
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From the President
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Brian R. Riveland, MD
From
Sausage Making to Mud Wrestling
The results are in.
Thank you to the 96 of you who took the time to fill out the survey on
health care reform. While not
statistically valid it is helpful to get some idea of the thoughts and
perspective of the membership. One of
the challenges that any broad based organization has, is to adequately
represent its membership. However, as
the survey results indicate not all physicians are of the same opinion about
most things, even something as central to our profession as health care
reform. Physicians have a wide range of
political, social and economic views that influence their approach to this
complex issue. I believe most physician
organizations are struggling with representing their membership that might have
diametrically opposed views on this very topic.
With some limited research of physician organizations it is evident
there are some competing interests when addressing health care reform. At the end of this article are references for
several of the larger physician organizations and their policies on health care
reform. (These can be viewed at here in pdf format).
Read more... |
UA
Surgeons Perform Islet Cell Transplants at
UMC:
A
First for Arizona and the Southwest
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Surgeons at The University of Arizona Department of Surgery are the first
in the Southwest to perform successful auto-islet cell transplants in patients
with severe chronic pancreatitis. The dual procedure, which involves removing
the pancreas and then putting the patient's insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells back into the body, was performed this month at
University Medical Center on two women in their
mid-40s.
One woman, from Tucson,
underwent the procedure Aug. 6; the other patient, who traveled to Tucson from
Cincinnati, Ohio, had the surgery performed Aug. 13. The innovative procedure
alleviates the pain from pancreatitis, while avoiding surgically induced
diabetes.
"Chronic pancreatitis
can be extremely painful," said Horacio Rilo, MD, professor of surgery
and director of Cellular Transplantation at the UA. "Although a pancreatectomy (removing the pancreas) usually is effective
in relieving the debilitating pain in patients when all other treatments fail,
it induces permanent diabetes, requiring patients to take insulin shots or use
an insulin pump for the rest of their lives."
In an auto (meaning "self") islet transplant after a total
pancreatectomy, the patient's own insulin-producing beta cells contained in
clusters called "islets" are isolated immediately from the removed pancreas and
then put back into the patient's liver, where they lodge in small blood vessels
and release insulin.
Complete article...
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Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The
ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational
objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon
results
Andrew Carnegie
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Featured Business
MedaBytes is a part of the Maricopa County Medical Society's family of
businesses operating under the Medical Society Business Services. We
were established to assist the medical community with its computer and
networking needs. Like the other family members, MedaBytes strives to
offer a valuable service at a fair price. For more information, please visit their website. |
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Visit us on Facebook and Twitter!
Search for "Maricopa County Medical Society" on Facebook
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Refer a new member and save 50%
on your MCMS
membership dues!
For more information, visit us here...
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DOKTOBERFEST 2009!!
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Keep your calendars clear on Monday, October 12th! More information to come!
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Organized medicine aims to strengthen liability provisions in reform bill
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When lawmakers get back to considering health system
reform legislation this fall, physicians seeking relief from medical
liability pressures will be looking to revise and fortify protections
that made it into the House Energy and Commerce Committee's latest
version of the House reform bill.
An amendment offered by Reps. Bart Gordon (D, Tenn.), Jim Matheson
(D, Utah) and Nathan Deal (R, Ga.) would offer financial incentives to
states that enact certain liability alternatives that meet federal
standards -- as long as they do not limit attorneys' fees or impose
damage caps, which President Obama and many congressional Democrats
oppose.
The provisions were wrapped into an amendment offered by Rep. Mike
Doyle (D, Pa.) and approved by the Energy and Commerce Committee in a
July 31 voice vote as part of a deal between Democratic leaders and the
conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition. The Commerce version must
be reconciled with two other measures that lack medical liability
reforms before the full House can take up the bill.
Read more...
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HHS to dole out $1.2 billion for health IT grants
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The Obama administration will make available nearly $1.2
billion in federal grants to create a large network of regional health
information technology centers and state-based entities to support
physicians and hospitals as they acquire and implement electronic
health records systems that meet federal standards.
Physicians and hospitals need to have an EHR system in place that
meets "meaningful use" standards if they hope to be eligible for the
billions in Medicare and Medicaid bonuses available starting in 2011
through the economic stimulus package adopted earlier this year. The
grants announced Aug. 20 by the Dept. of Health and Human Services and
Vice President Joe Biden are designed to provide a supportive framework
to help entities meet those standards, which will be proposed before
the end of the year.
David Blumenthal, MD, the national health information technology
coordinator, said the new money is intended to help create a national,
private and secure EHR system.
"The grants are designed to help doctors and hospitals acquire
electronic health records and use them in meaningful ways to improve
the health of patients and reduce waste and inefficiency," he said.
"They will also help states lead the way in creating the infrastructure
for health information exchange, which enables information to follow
patients within and across communities, wherever the information is
needed to help doctors and patients make the best decisions about
medical care."
Read more...
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Medicare pay for services by nonphysicians comes under scrutiny
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Medicare is paying millions of dollars for claims on
services that are performed by nonphysicians who are not properly
trained or qualified, according to a report released Aug. 5 by Dept. of
Health and Human Services investigators.
The HHS Office of Inspector General examined Medicare Part B data
for the first quarter of 2007 to determine how often the program paid
for services billed by physicians but performed by nonphysicians,
through a provision known as "incident to" services. Under this rule,
physicians are allowed to bill for a treatment performed by a
nonphysician, as long as that worker has the appropriate training,
certification and licensure. Physician assistants, nurses, medical
technicians and medical assistants are included in the nonphysician
category.
For this study, OIG only looked at cases where a physician used the
"incident to" rule to bill more than 24 hours worth of services in a
single day.
More information... |
Half of large practices net bonuses from Medicare P4P demo
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The Obama White House has indicated it will continue the
move toward more pay-for-performance in Medicare, despite mixed results
for physicians in the P4P demonstrations it inherited from the previous
administration.
On Aug. 17, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
disclosed findings from three ongoing programs -- including first-year
results from a small-practice demonstration -- and announced the start
of three new value-based purchasing demonstrations.
Third-year results were revealed for the Physician Group Practice
Demonstration, which is in its fifth year of operation and is slated to
end March 31, 2010. Although CMS has extended the demonstration twice
beyond its initial three-year limit, the agency said it does not
anticipate extending the program again.
All 10 of the large physician groups participating in the program
achieved benchmark performances on at least 28 of 32 quality-of-care
measures, which cover diabetes, congestive heart failure, coronary
artery disease, hypertension and cancer screening. Groups can receive
up to 80% of the savings they generate for Medicare by reducing medical
complications and hospitalizations.
Complete article...
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Recession easing for U.S. hospitals, study finds
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The recession appears to be easing for U.S. hospitals, although
close to a third of hospitals remain in the red, according to a study
published on Wednesday.
The median profit
margin of U.S. hospitals rose from 0.17% in the third quarter of 2008
to 3.1% in the first quarter of 2009, the analysis from Thomson Reuters
found.
All classes and sizes of hospitals,
including large community hospitals and teaching hospitals, had better
margins, the study found. "The financial
situation has improved dramatically for U.S. hospitals," said Gary
Pickens, chief research officer for the Healthcare & Science
business of Thomson Reuters.
"When we
published our first analysis of hospital economic health in the fall of
2008, hospitals were facing unprecedented economic stress and staring
down a real crisis," Pickens added in a statement.
"Through
a combination of aggressive cost controls and overall improvement in
the economy, we're beginning to see a recovery, but it will be critical
to watch these metrics to make sure that recovery is sustainable."
Pickens
and colleagues tracked 24 key financial indicators of more than 400
hospitals, looking at revenue and profit, employment, closures,
inpatient volume, days of cash on hand and charity expenses.
They found:
--Median
total margins were near zero in the third quarter of 2008. In the first
quarter of 2009, all classes of hospitals had positive operating
margins, reaching an average of 3.1%.
--30% of hospitals still had negative profit margins, improved from 50% in the third quarter of 2008.
--Liquidity is steady, with hospitals having a median 90 days cash on hand at the beginning of this year.
--More than 90% of licensed beds were being used in a typical hospital, holding steady since 2005.
--Hospitals
have cut labor costs by 3% year-over-year, while non-labor-related
expenses have decreased by approximately 2% year-over-year.
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County's mental-health system failing
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Dennis Winters sits in his apartment clutching a teddy bear, something a psychiatrist gave him years ago to make him feel less lonely.
Decades of punishing mental illness have often left Winters feeling
lonely. Most days he watches television into the night and scribbles
his thoughts into notebooks.
"I'm just hanging on by a thread," he said.
Arizona taxpayers spent $360 million this year to help Maricopa County
residents like Winters. But a nearly 30-year-old lawsuit, billions of
dollars spent and a series of bureaucratic transformations haven't
changed a basic fact: Most of the county's 23,000 patients with serious
mental illness aren't getting better.
The number of seriously mentally ill people in Maricopa County has
exploded in recent years, growing by 94 percent since 2000. It will
grow another 45 percent by 2015, according to state estimates.
More information... |
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Serving medicine, serving the community
since
1892...
InforMed
Society is published by the Maricopa County
Medical Society.
Copyright
© 2009
Questions
or Comments, please email us at: InforMed@mcmsonline.com |
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