Last week, Medicare proposed nine additional “do not pay” conditions, several months before implementing the first eight. I like the concept of not paying for preventable adverse events, but this new list is a case of too far, too fast. In my previous review of the new policy (here and in this article), I described [...]
Archive | April, 2008
Snooping At Britney’s Chart: Why Should Docs and Nurses Have Different Rules?
Should doctors and nurses be subject to different penalties for precisely the same infraction? Of course not. Are they? Sure. Just ask Britney Spears. Britney was hospitalized at UCLA at least twice in the past few years – once when she gave birth to her first son in 2005, and again in early 2008 for [...]
Should Patient Satisfaction Scores Be Adjusted for Where Patients Shop?
Last week, Medicare added patient satisfaction data to its hospital reporting website. This is progress, but it raises an interesting question: should patient satisfaction scores be case-mix adjusted? The motivation to include patient satisfaction data comes from the Institute of Medicine’s inclusion of “patient-centeredness” as one key component of quality. And what could be simpler [...]
A Quick Thanks for a Very Nice Honor
Today, Modern Healthcare released its yearly list of the 50 most influential physician-execs in the U.S. I have to believe that you, my readers, are at least partly responsible (along with my parents and their pals in Boca) for my #19 position, the highest rank of any full-time faculty physician. As nice as this is, [...]
Notes from the Society of Hospital Medicine’s Annual Meeting
A few random observations from the Society of Hospital Medicine’s annual meeting in San Diego: There are about 1600 people here, most of whom I don’t know. How did this happen? People still seem pretty jazzed about their jobs and lives. The meeting has not lost its soul, nor its sense of wonderment or of [...]
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