IntelliHub April 19 2013
When hospitals make mistakes, causing patients to stay longer, insurers wind up paying for extended stays and extra care—which means hospitals have a financial disincentive to do the right thing.
“We found clear evidence that reducing harm and improving quality is perversely penalized in our current health care system,” Sunil Eappen, lead author and chief medical officer of Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, told the Harvard School of Public Health.
The study was conducted by the Boston Consulting Group, Harvard’s schools of medicine and public health, and Texas Health Resources, a large nonprofit hospital system that provided the records of 34,256 surgery patients for analysis.
More than 1,800 of these patients had one or more complications that could have been prevented, like blood clots, pneumonia or infected incisions.
The findings of the research included the following:
- Patients with private insurance who had a complication provided hospitals with a 330% higher profit margin than those without a complication.
- Medicare patients with a complication produced a 190% higher margin.
The authors said reforming the payment system to stop rewarding poor care may help to bring down surgical complication rates—otherwise, hospitals will have little incentive to improve.
Having worked in the hospital system I also noticed a lot of incompetence in the labs/on the floors/surgery this scared me most/but the largest and most “abusive” I emphasis were the manipulative CEO’S these people had no soul! They are about their Bonuses no matter how bad they abuse their employees! Those guy’s and their upper corporate masters are the real evil as they do nothing to really justify their existence! You want straighten out the system, eliminate the lazy do nothing corporations and eliminate non profit designation. Having been in business for my self I have learned to see things that a employee wouldn’t be aware of! There is no justifying the profits as this institution (AMA) has no cures or ever did!They lie real good!!
yeah it’s the same old story. . inefficiency is the margin for profitability.. the defective car.. computers that randomly break down. . who is spreading the viruses?.. it is in the interest of all corporations that our possessions magically break and become defective.. chaos is their guarantee to power. Make us chase that little cheese on the wheel..