Author: P Hasselbacher

Narcotized Elderly America: Diseased, Stoned, or Dealing?

pills-15The Federal Government has been releasing an avalanche of health care utilization data over the past very few years while the rest of use are still trying to figure out how to use the information.  While there exists the potential to use the data to evaluate healthcare quality and safety, to ferret out best medical practices, to more efficiently use increasingly limited healthcare dollars, or to otherwise guide good public policy; the most apparent utility so far is to identify medical fraud. It is easier to justify looking for fraud than to confront entrenched interests dug in deep in this profitable segment of the economy.

Medicare prescription drug cost and utilization data.
One month ago, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published another data-dump. It was the first compilation of all drugs and selected supplies prescribed by physicians and other healthcare professionals to the majority of Medicare patients in 2013.  Included beneficiaries number 35.7 million and include those enrolled in freestanding Medicare Part-D drug plans, or those covered by drug plans that are part of Medicare Part-C (managed care) Advantage plans. These make up about 68% of all Medicare beneficiaries. Medicare fee-for-service patients are not included.  Recall also that a proportion of all Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled because they are disabled, not because they are over 65 years old.   Each provider has a line item for every discrete drug prescribed more than ten times by them (to protect patient privacy) including the number of unique beneficiaries receiving the drug, the number of times times prescribed or renewed, the number of days worth of of drug prescribed, and the total amount paid for the drug by the patient, Medicare, and any third party payers.  In the full data file there are 23,650,520 line items for more than 1 million individual providers prescribing 3449 different drugs or supplies. Continue reading “Narcotized Elderly America: Diseased, Stoned, or Dealing?”

UofL Board of Trustees to Meet at Health Sciences Campus.

Trustees follow on the heels of accreditation site-visit.

uofl-valveThe regularly scheduled June meeting of the UofL Board of Trustees will be held at various locations within the Health Sciences Campus this Thursday, June 4.  It promises to be a long and busy session. [Agenda here.]  In addition to its usual slate of business, Trustees will hear an update about the partnership with KentuckyOne Health from the CEO of Catholic Health Initiatives, Kevin Lofton. Interspersed with regular sessions will be walking tours to include the cardiovascular services at Jewish Hospital, the Neurorecovery Training Institute at Frazier Rehab, the Level 1 Trauma Center at University Hospital, the Center for Women and Infants within University Hospital, the UofL Healthcare Remote Physician Presence Robot Network, and the recently remodeled instructional facilities at the School of Medicine.  I do not expect to see the same fireworks launched as at the May meeting, but who would have predicted then!  Anything can happen.

LCME Accreditation Site visit.
The School of Medicine was visited in May by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the organization sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Medical Association that accredits American and Canadian schools of medicine and osteopathy– necessary for these professional schools to grant M.D. or D.O. degrees to their students. This important site visit is the first one following UofL’s School of Medicine being placed on probation last year.  I expect that Medical School Dean Tony Ganzel will give an update on what the School had done to respond to the LCME’s concerns, and perhaps something about how the site visit went.  I am unaware of the timetable for a final report and decision, but typically please things take several months. It would be nice to get things cleared up before the next application cycle and enrollment.  Letters of acceptance have already gone out for next Fall’s entering class. Continue reading “UofL Board of Trustees to Meet at Health Sciences Campus.”

Presidential Outburst at UofL Board Meeting. 

ramsey-may2015•Only Nominally Over Executive Compensation.
•Trustee requests for information and oversight rebuffed.
•Audit called for.

Readers will note that I have not posted anything for over a month.  In truth, I was in Europe for three weeks and am just now getting over a jet-lagged recovery. This was to be an “unplugged” holiday. My long-suffering wife likes to tell the story of how I once almost missed our connection in the Amsterdam Airport waiting to upload a post over the free McDonald’s internet connection. She has other stories too! Indeed, I admit to occasionally feeling guilty of insufficient spousal attention during our travels in these hyper-connected times.

Always something to write about.
I did cheat on this good woman a little by occasionally peeking at the news.  It is not that there was nothing I like to write about!  Several updates of existing hospital quality, safety, and performance ratings were released, as well as a new rating approach by U.S. News & World Report. Flanking these stories were scholarly reports addressing the same issues I have been raising about the reliability and usability of existing rating systems.

There was new data-hacking breach of over a million members at another health insurer. No one should feel safe!  Medicare released a massive database of all outpatient drugs prescribed for those with Part-D drug coverage or in Medicare managed-care plans. The data is broken down by individual drug, healthcare provider, and cost and is already generating a flurry of attention.  For example, it turns out that many of the top prescribers of specific drugs receive monetary payments from the manufacturer. [Naturally this does not influence their professional judgments!] I started looking at the drug database on the flight home– this wasn’t really cheating–  and will have more to say future articles.

New Sunshine Act Data Release.
Entirely by coincidence, the next iteration of the federal database of payments to medical providers by device and drug manufacturers will be released in a month or so and will now list at least some payments to providers for continuing medical education (CME).  These latter payments, previously undisclosed, provide a measure of the degree that manufacturers have taken control of what physicians and other providers think and do.  If transparency and accountability is the goal of the Open Records Program (a.k.a. Sunshine Act), it was a critical error to have initially allowed payments for CME to remain hidden. The fact that such payments were exempted from disclosure attests to the lobbying power of both drug companies and the academic medical establishment.

UofL against the world (and its own Board?).
There were other items I filed away in my write-about-later folder, but the big-ticket item for Kentucky was the further unfolding, indeed explosion of nagging concerns over University governance and secrecy, fueled by revelations about executive compensation at the University of Louisville, and triggered by a recent call from a University Trustee and others for an external independent audit by Kentucky’s State Auditor of Public Accounts. The news reports of the Trustees’ meeting used words like “angrily,” “testy,” agitated,” “contentious,” “defiant,” and “lashes out” to describe the behavior or UofL President James Ramsey.  All of this was in response to quite reasonable requests by responsible board members for information that either they or the public is entitled to.  Comments to articles from the public on the three major Louisville markets were solidly against Dr. Ramsey’s positions, except for the reliable fan-boy or contract internet-troll for whom UofL can do no wrong.  I found the reports of the apparent melt-down difficult to believe until, on my return, I had a chance to view a video clip of part of the encounter— it was worse than I thought.  View it yourself. Was this justified indignity, staged outrage, or a hissy-fit?  You be the judge.  In any event, it must have been embarrassing for most of the folks present. Continue reading “Presidential Outburst at UofL Board Meeting. “

Medicare Releases New 5-Star Rating System for Acute Care Hospitals.

Not everyone is happy, but Kentucky doing better than the rest!

Yesterday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released its first iteration of a new and simplified method of presenting the results of the awkwardly named HCAHPS survey that is administered to patients after their discharge.  The survey is intended to capture the patients’ own perceptions of their hospital experience and it is now part of the larger CMS Hospital-Compare initiative. As with previously released quality and safety initiatives, the reaction of individual hospitals is mixed.

Background.
The survey of 32 questions is administered to randomly selected adult patients who are between 48 hours to 6 weeks after being discharged alive from acute-care Medicare hospitals.  Unlike most other quality and safety programs managed by CMS, individual patient participants are not limited to the Medicare or Medicaid programs.  Hospitals attempt to reach a target of 300 surveys per year by telephone or mail, but some smaller hospitals struggle to do this.  Additionally, hospitals that are exempt from having to submit the more objective Medicare process and outcome measurements (including Medicare’s Critical Access Hospitals) can participate voluntarily in this patient experience program.

Hospitals have been submitting this information voluntarily since 2006, it has been mandatory since 2007, and the results have been reported publically since 2008.  A similar program for nursing homes and a few other healthcare providers already exists.  Future plans are to include these patient experience scores with the other more blood-and-guts process and outcome measures to provide a single global star-score for all Medicare hospitals. Proprietary quality and safety organizations are already doing this. Continue reading “Medicare Releases New 5-Star Rating System for Acute Care Hospitals.”