HEALTH CARE
Poor Performance Means Less Medicare Reimbursement for Most Minnesota Hospitals Medicare is revamping its payment system for hospitals as part of an effort to make them accountable on quality. The latest change will give bonuses and penalties to hospitals based on how well they performed on quality measures.
Health Care and Pursuit of a Profit Make a Poor Mix A shareholder might even applaud the creativity with which profit-seeking institutions go about seeking profit. But the consequences of this pursuit might not be so great for other stakeholders in the system — patients, for instance. One study found that patients’ mortality rates spiked when nonprofit hospitals switched to become profit-making, and their staff levels declined.
Don Berwick Mulls Run for MA Governor Berwick ran the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and is one of the nation’s leading experts on health cost and quality. At the time, the height of the national debate over Obama’s health care overhaul, Republicans accused Berwick of wanting to ration services, a charge he called a mischaracterization.
Medicare Spends $1B on Breast Cancer Screening Screening women for breast cancer costs the U.S. Medicare program $1 billion every year – about as much as it spends on treatment, according to a new study.
NOTES ON NURSING
Kennedy Sues Nurses over Newborn Incident Less than two months after being acquitted on charges of endangering his 2-day-old son and harassing nurses who attempted to stop him from taking the baby outside Northern Westchester Hospital, Douglas Kennedy is suing the hospital, two nurses and one of their husbands.
Nurses Voice Concerns About CT Hospital Cuts At Danbury Hospital, nurses are asking why open registered nursing positions are being filled by staff that is paid by the day and can easily be let go, said the hospital’s AFT Local 5047 President Mary Consoli.