July 15, 2024 Recent News

 

Healthcare

Hospitals

Physicians

Healthcare

HHS has said that Change Healthcare and not the individual hospitals, must notify all the people involved in the hack of Change.  This is about 30% of the country.  It should cost UnitedHealth a bundle forthis.  However, they could have avoided the hack by putting more effort into security.

South Korea medical care is still up in the air.  Another one day strike was held along with an indefinite work stoppage at Seoul National University and other major facilities.  This is all due to the government mandating without consulting the physicians a significant increase in trainee physicians.  The interns and residents have been on strike since February.  The government is caving and they now state they withdraw a plan to suspend licenses of the physicians who do not return to work.

Stanford Health has stopped dealing with Blue Shield of California.  The contract has lapsed but Stanford says that it will honor Blue Shield in network out of pocket expenses for all services.  They are negotiating a new contract.

The WSJ (7/9) has exposed Medicare Advantage as crooks.  They have shown that the insurers use home visits to add diagnoses for patients that are blatantly false in order to increase their per patient per month payments.  The insurers say their nurses are better than physicians at catching disease earlier.  However, almost all of the HIV diagnosis are on people who are not taking retrovirals and many who are diagnosed with diabetic cataracts have had cataract surgery so it is impossible to still have the disease.        Top

Hospitals

A recent article in the WSJ has shown the lies hospitals say when the want to merge.  The article shows that the merging of hospitals actually causes an increase in consumer costs not the bantered lowering of costs.  It also detailed the hospitals fighting the moving of surgeries into the ambulatory surgical centers for the same quality but at a lesser cost.  The article then went on to show the same problems with the purchasing of physicians by the private entities and the lies the private entities say when they come across a state with a corporate practice of medicine act.

Albany New York Med Health is dropping Humana Medicare Advantage for non-emergency services.  This is a push by systems against Medicare Advantage insurers who push low prices and excessive prior authorization denial.

The feds have ordered Steward North Shore Medical Center in Miami to stop doing mammograms.  The hospital failed the criteria set by the American College of Radiology that may have led to inaccurate results.

Adena Health of Chillicothe, Ohio failed their accreditation by the NCQA for credentialing physicians.          Top

Physicians

Dr. Raymond Lynch was the director of transplant quality and outcomes and was hired after Penn State Health got a terrible reputation for its safety standards and internal culture.  He found the transplant program at Milton Hershey Medical Center was not being well run and told his fellow surgeons so as well as administration.  Soon after he told administration he was fired.  Soon after that the feds again looked at the program and then the transplant program was discontinued.  Who would want to work at an institution like that??        Top

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 DISCLAIMER: Although this article is updated periodically, it reflects the author's point of view at the time of publication. Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice. Readers should consult with their own legal counsel before acting on any of the information presented.