There has been a lot of complaining lately about the lack of interoperability in healthcare information technology and how the inability of computers to communicate with each other impedes organizing population health-improvement systems. But two Southern California organizations that just announced a deal to open a string of primary-care health centers said interoperability concerns will not stand in the way.
Southern California's MemorialCare Health System and UC Irvine Health announced the collaboration Oct. 2. Although the hospitals and medical groups of the two systems use a mix of products that includes Allscripts, NextGen Healthcare as well as both Epic's hospital and ambulatory systems, organization executives say interfaces can be created to let them all talk to each other.
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Part of a four-year tentative labor agreement reached this week between the California Nurses Association and Dignity Health includes a new program designed to curtail and deal with workplace violence.
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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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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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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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As healthcare reform expands coverage, nonphysician providers are seeking to expand their portfolio of licensed services and are facing intense opposition from doctors to their efforts.
In California, three bills before the Legislature propose to expand the scope of practice for nurse practitioners, optometrists and pharmacists, with one bill advancing and two bills being stalled.
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Lee
Some of California’s top insurers, including Kaiser Permanente, are protesting the state’s plans to drop quality ratings from insurance listings when its exchange goes public on Oct. 1.
Covered California executive director Peter Lee told the Los Angeles Times that the data behind existing quality ratings were too out of date. He also fears the plans sold on the exchanges will be very different from the individual policies that formed the basis for the star-based grades (this is movie-land).
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Medical journals and healthcare publications may soon notice more readers taking deep research dives into their archives looking for old studies, reports and articles on defensive medicine. That's because California's landmark 1975 Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act—which limits pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice lawsuits to $250,000—is coming under fire from two fronts.
The Consumer Watchdog organization and “medical negligence survivors” are working to get the Troy and Alana Pack Patient Safety Act, a ballot initiative, on the November ballot. Named after the children killed in a 2003 accident, the measure would require hospitals to subject physicians to random drug and alcohol testing, require mandatory testing after an unexpected death or serious injury, and adjust the $250,000 cap for inflation. That would raise the cap to $1.1 million. It needs to get about 750,000 signatures to get on the ballot.
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Joint replacement prices at the most costly California hospitals plunged by one-third after the state required its workers and retirees to pay out of pocket all costs above a “reference price” of $30,000 for orthopedic surgery, a new study said.
The average cost of joint replacement among high-priced hospitals dropped to $28,465 after the California Public Employees' Retirement System made the change in 2011, wrote University of California researchers James Robinson and Timothy Brown in the journal Health Affairs. That's down from $43,308 the prior year.
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Wachter
Dr. Robert Wachter, a pioneer in the field of hospitalist medicine, has been elected to board of directors of IPC the Hospitalist Co., a North Hollywood, Calif.-based hospital medicine and physician group practice company operating in 28 states.
Wachter, a professor and associate chair at the University of California at San Francisco who just finished his term as chairman of the American Board of Internal Medicine, will chair the IPC board's quality committee.
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Wachter
Dr. Robert Wachter, a pioneer in the field of hospitalist medicine, has been elected to board of directors of IPC the Hospitalist Co., a North Hollywood, Calif.-based hospital medicine and physician group practice company operating in 28 states.
Wachter, a professor and associate chair at the University of California at San Francisco who just finished his term as chairman of the American Board of Internal Medicine, will chair the IPC board's quality committee.
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