Dear Readers: This was a pitch for a magazine article, so I apologize if it’s a little too wonk-y. I decided to post it here to see what other ideas you could drum up. Quick summary: There’s an idea floating around called the Patient-Centered Medical Home–a way to integrate, automate, and improve how primary medical [...]
18Apr10
Who Sues?
Time to turn our attention to an unpleasant topic: Lawsuits. Who files them? Why? And what actually happens? There have been oceans of ink spilled about medical malpractice. An oversimplification of the various positions on malpractice and malpractice reform goes something like this: (+) Malpractice suits are good. They keep healthcare professionals and hospitals on their [...]
7 Comments
Posted in health care finance, hospital care, patient experience
Tagged lawsuits, malpractice
Tagged lawsuits, malpractice
4Apr10
Bloodletting, Vol. 1
I’ve just finished a month “on-service” as a teaching attending for a general medicine team here at GlassHospital. This means I served as the physician of record for every patient admitted to the team. You might find it interesting to know that patients admitted to the hospital’s general medicine service get assigned to their teams [...]
5 Comments
Posted in health care finance, hospital care, patient experience
Tagged laboratory tests, medical tradition
Tagged laboratory tests, medical tradition
21Mar10
Whither Charity Care?
The Illinois Supreme Court issued a fascinating ruling last week, upholding a decision to strip a downstate non-profit hospital chain of its tax-exempt status for failing to provide sufficient charity care to its patients. Provena Covenant Medical Center is a chain of six Catholic hospitals. Provena will now in effect owe millions of dollars in [...]
11Mar10
Down the Rabbit Hole
A local business publication recently reported some happy financial news for GlassHospital. However, if read carefully, the article contains this apparent paradox: ER traffic is down. Hospital admissions are down. Revenue (and profit!) is up! How can this be? I mean, if this were a real business, wouldn’t less traffic and fewer ‘units sold’ equal less revenue [...]
