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Amid a Wild West of consumer-ratings sites, North Shore-LIJ Health System is one of only a few hospitals in the U.S. to take matters into its own hands. The Long Island-based hospital network began posting online ratings of its doctors this week, making it the first such organization in the metropolitan area to do so, hospital officials said. (Ramey, 8/26)

Hospitals are cheating to avoid the Obama administration’s new readmissions penalties, according to a new Health Affairs post — which the authors say casts doubt on achievements that CMS has been trumpeting for several years. Rather than drastically reducing the number of patients readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge, hospitals instead have been relabeling many of those patient visits as “observation stays” that don’t count toward readmission tallies, the authors argue. Others have been treated in emergency departments, which also excludes them from the count. (Mershon, 8/27)

All but one of Connecticut’s acute-care hospitals will lose Medicare reimbursement in 2015-16 as a penalty for high readmissions of discharged patients, new federal data show. The penalties against 28 hospitals mean Connecticut has one of the highest percentages nationally – more than 90 percent — of hospitals facing Medicare reductions. Only the Hebrew Home and Hospital of West Hartford escaped penalties; the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center is exempted from the federal program. (Chedekel, 8/26)

Two business lobbying groups this week called on the Consumer Financial Protection Board to investigate the medical funding industry after a Reuters investigation revealed that private investors are funding operations for women who have sued makers of surgical implants. The American Tort Reform Association and DRI-The Voice of the Defense Bar told Reuters on Tuesday that medical funders take advantage of the people they claim to be helping. (Frankel and Dye, 8/26)