Industry News

Employers Tinker with Workplace Clinics (Blue Water Benefits blog — 12/21/10). Interest in workplace clinics has intensified in recent years,with employers moving well beyond traditional niches of occupational health and minor acute care to offering clinics that provide a full range of wellness and primary care services.

Evidence that’s not what it seems (Stacey Butterfield, ACP Hospitalist, 12/10). Any evidence on which to base such a difficult choice seems like a help. But what if the research that appears to provide evidence is actually based on insufficient data and the researchers’ own opinions?

The Doctor Will See You Now, at Work (Barbara Mannino, Fox Business, 12/17/10). Companies are providing care services at the workplace, building onsite clinics, which have become the hub of a wide range of programs that promote good health.

Leading Health Care Organizations Announce Collaborative Effort to Improve Care, Lower Costs (PRNewswire, 12/15/10)

Cleveland Clinic, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Denver Health, Geisinger Health System, Intermountain Healthcare, and Mayo Clinic will join The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice to share data on outcomes, quality, and costs across a range of common and costly conditions and treatments. The group will determine best practices for delivering care for these conditions and will rapidly disseminate actionable recommendations to providers and health systems across the United States. In addition to achieving better quality and outcomes, the Collaborative intends to improve the efficiency of standard clinical care delivery to reduce the per capita cost in these conditions and to keep costs in pace with the consumer price index.

Evidence-based Medicine (HealthMad blog, 12/14/10). The practice of evidence-based medicine involves a combination of individual clinical experience and the best evidence obtained through systematic research.

Costs rise for Calif. workers’ comp insurers (Kelly Johnson, Sacramento Business Journal, 12/10/10). California’s workers’ compensation insurers are experiencing higher losses as the number and average cost of claims continue to rise, but at a slower pace than the last few years.

Type of Treatment is Primary Predictor of Return to Work (Work Loss Data Institute, 11/02/10). The number one predictor of disability duration is type of medical treatment, and its effects far exceed others, including type of job, co morbidities, age, and severity.

Report showing med care exceeding cash benefits is a wake-up call, (Risk & Insurance, 10/25/10). For the first time, medical benefits accounted for more than half of all benefits paid in workers’ compensation, according to a new study. The report points to the need to rethink the way claims are treated, according to a veteran workers’ comp attorney.

A frame of reference – work comp and the rest of the world (Joseph Paduda, Managed Care Matters–blog, 10/15/10). Those of us who spend a good deal of time buried in the world of work comp sometimes need to look up and out, to see where we ‘fit’ in the larger world.

Healthy Eats for Data-Hungry Doctors (David Kibbe & Brian Klepper, Kibbe & Klepper on Health Care, 09/29/10)

We are very near to a ‘tipping point’ that will make physicians, medical practices, and provider organizations of all kinds very hungry for these kinds of data. There is growing pressure to control cost, both through reform and the marketplace, and moves afoot to significantly penalize physicians and organizations that have unnecessarily high costs.

New Study Proves Reducing Healthcare Costs While Improving Care Is Achievable (David Wennberg, The Health Care Blog, 09/23/10). The results are in: population-based care management doesn’t just improve patient satisfaction – it also can significantly reduce medical costs.

Top 7 Myths about Workers Compensation (WorkersCompensation.com, 09/16/10)

#3. Workers comp Can be Measured by the Cost of the Premium. If an employer thinks the way to measure the cost of workers comp is by the price of the insurance premium, they are measuring only a small part of the total cost of workers compensation. The cost of workers comp not only includes the direct cost of the premium, but also includes the much larger indirect cost of lost production, lost supervisory time, temporary replacement cost or overtime cost, increased training, equipment or property damage, lower morale and unhappy customers.

Visibility Key to efficient revenue cycle management (John Anderson, Healthcare IT News, 09/16/2010). Without some critical changes to provider workflow and revenue cycle management practices, providers will, in coming years, spend even more time and money chasing patient receivables and dealing with increased levels of uncollectible patient responsibility dollars.

Report: Workers’ Comp Payments For Medical Care Exceed Cash Benefits for the First Time (Laura Walter, EHS Today, 09/09/10). For the first time, medical benefits accounted for over half (50.4 percent) of all benefits paid.

Employer WC Costs Down, But Medical Costs Rising (Property Casualty 360, 09/09/2010). For the first time, medical benefits accounted for over half (50.4 percent) of all benefits paid.

Getting Physical in Return-to-Work Programs (Bill Gonser and Ben Archibald, EHS Today, 04/01/10). Through the use of centralized information storage, deliberate processes and old-fashioned teamwork, organizations can drastically improve their return-to-work programs, decrease lost workdays and increase overall organizational performance.

On-Site Clinics Resurface as Latest Healthcare Trend (Littler Mendelson, Healthcare Employment Counsel, 03/30/2010). The latest trend is a blast from the past: employers are bringing healthcare directly to the workplace—either by hiring physicians directly or by outsourcing to a medical provider—to provide on-site medical services at the employer’s location.

Wasteful spending accounts for $1.2 Trillion in healthcare costs (Sara Patterson, Fierce Healthcare, 03/04/10)

Another contributor to waste is how a doctor decides to care for a patient. The variety of treatment options account for an estimated $10 billion of unnecessary cost each year, according to the report… “The old belief that better care is more care, turns out it’s just not true,” James said. “Most of the savings go back to insurers or the government. We’re nearly always financially punished every time we save money.”

A History of Our Healthcare Future, by John Halamka, MD, CIO, CareGroup Health System, Harvard Medical School (Healthcare IT News, 01/20/10). Three predictions:

• Clinicians will become healthcare coordinators, working in partnership with patients to manage wellness using a shared lifetime electronic health record.
• Patients will undergo fewer tests and take fewer medications because redundant and inappropriate care will be reduced. Healthcare value will improve – higher quality for less costs, since less care is often the right answer.
• Payers will reimburse providers for quality rather than quantity since electronic health records will document the care given and not given.