Halvorson
Long-time Kaiser Permanente leader George Halvorson previously gave up his CEO post and will soon be relinquishing his chairman position. But he doesn't want anyone to think he's ready to move to a senior condo in Florida.
“I'm definitely not retiring,” said Halvorson, who placed No. 9 in his 11th appearance on Modern Healthcare's 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare ranking. “I'm repotting.”
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Patients do care about what becomes of their health information after it's used for their treatment, and they care more about what it's used for than who's using it.
That's according to a survey report published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association summarizing research aimed to measure patient preferences about sharing their electronic health information for so-called “secondary uses.”
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Kaiser Permanente reports it used patient registries, data analytics, dissemination of evidence-based guidelines, sharing of performance metrics and the increased use of prescription drugs to achieve a near doubling of the rate of patients who got their high blood pressure under control. The report highlights the growing focus by healthcare providers and health plans on taking proactive measures to improve population health and management of chronic medical conditions.
Results of the long-term, large-scale and multifaceted effort were published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The lead author is Dr. Marc Jaffe, of the Kaiser Permanente South San Francisco Medical Center.
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An investigative report in Wednesday's USA Today on physician discipline illustrates why some observers are concerned about the Federation of State Medical Boards' recent decision to stop publishing its annual report on the number of disciplinary actions taken by state medical boards.
The USA Today article found that 52% of the nearly 6,000 physicians who had their clinical privileges restricted or revoked by hospitals or other institutions for misconduct involving patient care from 2001 to 2011 never received fines, license restrictions or license suspensions or revocations by a state medical board. Nearly 250 of the doctors sanctioned by institutions faced no licensure action despite being cited by their institution as an immediate threat to health and safety.
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The Union of American Physicians and Dentists and California state officials have tentatively agreed on a three-year labor contract for about 1,500 employees including physicians and other staff working for the Department of Human Resources, the Sacramento Bee reports.
The agreement includes an 8% raise for some physicians and surgeons, a 5% raise for some medical consultants and public health officers, and a 4% raise for all other unionized employees. The increases would depend on whether state revenue meets projections. If there is a shortfall, the pay hikes would be delayed until the 2015-2016 fiscal year.
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Have you heard this joke before?
How do you know when a total joint implant sales rep is at the hospital? When the orthopedic surgeons' cars aren't the nicest ones in the parking lot.
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Physician assistants and nurse practitioners increasingly are specializing and can't be counted on to provide the solution to the nation's shortage of primary-care providers, a report by the American Academy of Family Physicians concluded.
Even though they're often touted as a solution to filling in patient care gaps because of a shortage of primary-care docs, not enough PAs and NPs are working in primary care to make a difference, so policymakers need to come up with better solutions to address primary-care access, the researchers said.
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Minuteman Health, a not-for-profit, consumer-governed health plan sponsored by Vanguard Health Systems and Tufts Medical Center, said Monday that it received an HMO license and premium rate approval from Massachusetts regulators.
The plan will offer individual and small-group plans both on and off Massachusetts' state insurance exchange starting in October.
Minuteman is one of the Consumer Operated and Oriented plans in 24 states around the country made possible by startup loans authorized by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The goal is to encourage the launch of consumer-friendly plans that foster greater competition in the insurance market. While other co-op plans around the country previously received approval to sell plans on state insurance exchanges, what sets Minuteman apart is that it was originally sponsored by two major hospital systems. Many of the co-op plans were organized by groups and individuals not associated with major providers or investor-owned companies like Vanguard.
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The Obama administration and a national organization called the Young Invincibles on Monday launched a monthlong video contest to encourage enrollment of uninsured young adults in health plans offered on the state insurance exchanges.
Healthy young Americans are considered a key target group for enrollment, because their low medical costs will keep premiums down on the exchanges and offset higher costs of older, sicker enrollees. But surveys show that many young people either are unaware of the requirement that they obtain coverage or else don't see the need. Most uninsured young people who don't have coverage through their employer are expected to qualify for federal subsidies to buy insurance.
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California supporters of capping damages in medical malpractice lawsuits have gained an unexpected ally—Planned Parenthood. And that organization is coming under fire for its position on the issue.
Kathy Kneer, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said the state's pain-and-suffering cap has helped protect women's access to obstetricians. “To the extent we have a stable obstetrician provider pool, there is evidence it is working,” she said.
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Oncology nurse Theresa Brown, in an op-ed piece in the New York Times Sunday, argued for government-mandated nurse-staffing ratios.
She cited research showing that each extra patient a nurse had above an established nurse-patient ratio made it 7% more likely that one of the patients would die, and that 20,000 people died a year because they were in hospitals with overworked nurses.
“When hospitals have insufficient nursing staffs, patients who would have gotten better can get hurt, or worse,” Brown wrote.
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