Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
How Georgia And Missouri Hospitals Stack Up
A majority of Georgia hospitals will get performance bonuses from Medicare for their quality of care, federal data show. The 59 percent of Georgia hospitals getting the financial reward exceeds the national average of 55 percent, according to a Kaiser Health News article. The bonuses come from measurements that include patient satisfaction, lower death rates and how much patients cost Medicare. (Miller, 1/22)
New government incentive programs designed to enhance patient safety at hospitals are just getting off the ground, but already signs suggest the policies may need an overhaul. The newest round of data for the programs was recently released, prompting a discussion on whether they are effective in their stated goal: making hospitals safer for patients. (Shapiro, 1/23)
A large payer and health system in California are embroiled in a bitter feud over expired contract terms, the type of fight all too common in the fee-for-service world. With healthcare switching to value-based care, some had hoped these types of financial squabbles would disappear as the interests of providers and payers became more closely aligned on reducing costs. (Herman, 1/22)
Other media look at how doctors and patients may be able to harness big data to make better care decisions -
An association of cancer specialists is racing ahead with an ambitious project aimed at improving the quality and efficiency of cancer care by mining patients' electronic health records. The 30,000-member American Society of Clinical Oncology announced a partnership Wednesday with SAP, the global software giant whose U.S. base is in Newtown Square. They are developing CancerLinQ, a computer network intended to help cancer doctors make treatment decisions for their patients based on the results of comparable patients. (McCullough, 1/22)
Medicare is adding a visual tool to help kidney patients compare the quality of dialysis centers: Star ratings. Medicare's online Dialysis Facility Compare already included quality information such as whether patient death and hospitalization rates were higher than expected. But it says that information wasn't always easy for patients to understand. (1/22)
