Healthcare Digest 4/19: The Worse the Medical Care, the More the Profit

The folks at HealthLine.com ask this provocative question: Why Do We Get So Little Value from the Healthcare System?

They have some thoughts — mostly based around the American healthcare plan of fee-for-service, which HealthLine suggests “is costing us $2.87 trillion a year.”

Other findings that aren’t so great (for the healthcare industry):

• “Hospitals lack incentives to improve their quality of care, especially when they stand to make a 330-percent greater profit if complications arise.”
• “Researchers uncovered a connection between how people paid for their procedures and the likelihood they’d be back in the hospital because of complications.”
• “When a hospital is run on a for-profit basis, it’s bad business to prevent repeat customers.”
• “Doctors can determine the country’s economic future by transforming the type of care delivered by focusing on delivering cost-conscious value to patients, standardizing processes, and delivering care in a team-focused system.”

insidePatientFinance.com contributing editor Evan J. Albright published an article on a related topic earlier this week on our Forbes.com blog. Click here to read Improving Quality Patient Outcomes a Money Loser for Hospitals.

Friday’s headlines:

Good News for Florida Seniors on Medicare: “The recent filing for bankruptcy by Universal Health Care has left 37,500 Florida seniors scrambling to find new health insurance before their window to make a choice closes on May 31. In response, the nation’s premier online resource designed to help seniors select the right health insurance coverage has established a special ‘hotline’ to help with this urgent need.” [press release]

Florida Also Thinks Making Things MORE Complicated Will Make Things Less…Complicated?: “As if healthcare in Florida could not get more complex, the clock ticks down on the 2013 session and philosophical differences over providing uninsured adults access to health insurance, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Sen. Joe Negron offered an olive branch. It was recently reported that Negron had stated on Wednesday that a solution to the impasse on health care could be that the House and Senate agree to pass two health care programs: one that would provide subsidized access to a managed care plan with the use of additional federal Medicaid dollars — called Healthy Florida, which Negron drafted and supports — and one that is espoused by the House that would provide subsidies for an alternative program called Florida Health Choices Plus.” [Examiner.com]

Surprise! It’s More Taxes!: “The US Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration says that the IRS needs to do more to educate American taxpayers about the implications of the new Federal Affordable Care Act that will extend health care coverage to millions of uninsured Americans beginning in 2014.” [NBCBayArea.com]