Open Heart Wars Case Summary

Financial incentives play a significant role in how care is provided. The North Ohio Heart Center was found to perform more angioplasties compared to the Cleveland Clinic performing bypass surgeries resulting in different incentive rates (McLaughlin & McLaughlin, 2015). These non-invasive procedures (angioplasties) generated highly profitable incomes for the physicians involved at the North Ohio Heart Center. The physicians perceived these procedures to be a safer option of treatment as opposed to drug treatment or bypass surgery. These decisions impacted patient care by causing more patient visits and more tests being performed generating a cumulative higher reimbursement. These incentives are moving us away from what is best for the patient. Robert Doherty, ACP senior vice president, stated, “we need to move away from the piecemeal approach: how many visits you can generate, how many tests

Baby boomer aging is one of the large causative factors of this increase in demand (Glicken & Miller, 2013, p.1883-1889). According to Glicken & Miller (2013), the elderly population will nearly double in the next fifteen years putting a strain on the healthcare workforce. Also, more than half of physicians have intentions on limiting care access with regards to Medicare patients. Many medical doctors are refusing to care for Medicaid patients. This is a result of the growing number of individuals now with the means to afford healthcare due to the

The second is to consider that costs in California heath care are rising and California hospital costs was based on price competition that was created by the process of selective contracting according to researchers which has also resulted in the threat to patients. Thus the factors that play a decisive role in the health care strategy are "expenses to patient volume, case-mix, hospital specialization, hospital size, ownership, location," (Zwanziger; Melnick; Bamezai, 1994) and such factors. The hospitals that are going to be compared are the Irvine Medical Center, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

North Carolina does not have enough health practitioners to meet the demand of newly enroll population. Workforce shortage limits access to care as well as prevention, and treatment option especially in the rural areas (Siberman, 2013). There should be professional training programs for primary care providers, nurse practitioners, nurses, physician assistants and health care to accommodate the demand or people are going to end up in the emergency room. If the Medicaid expansion has been implemented, ACA has funds that would have been distributed to all the Universities for the Training Programs.

We live in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world and practice our profession in an era of unprecedented technological capability. In cardiovascular medicine, we can diagnose and treat heart disease with innovative approaches unimaginable to the previous generation of physicians. However, as a wealthy nation with a technologically advanced health care system, history will judge us not by our scientific progress, but by how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable amongst us. By this critical measure of

We ask our stakeholders to look into our following recommendations. Money and recruiting physicians (primary care) are the two of the biggest components that would lead to successfully turning the

One of the trends that is consistent between Pennsylvania and Kentucky is the discrepancy between physicians available in rural areas versus urban areas. For example, in Pennsylvania in 2012 for every 100,000 persons in an urban area of the state there was 273 physicians available. While in the rural areas per every 100,000 in population there was only 150 physicians. (2012 Pulse of Pennsylvania’s Physician and Physician Assistant Workforce, 2014). The reason behind this trend is simple, the larger the area the greater the financial opportunities. Also urban areas tend to have larger hospital facilities that provide access to well-equipped facilities, with lab services, radiology departments, staffed surgical suites, new medical devices to assist in surgery such as laser and robotics, and updated imaging devices. (Johnson and Cooper, 1982). These statistics highlight the need to institute methods that will attract providers to the rural areas. Whether this is through scholarship programs for those who intend to work in a rural area upon graduation, accepting federal funds to expand rural hospitals and improve technology, accepting federal funds to expand Medicaid programs, or a combination of all three providers need incentive to move into the rural areas. The standard of care needs to be consistent across the state no matter what area a patient lives in.

Since most specialty procedures are inpatient services, EMC’s inpatient occupancy rate suffers. The occupancy rate for Emanuel Medical Center – fifty percent – is far below that of its competitors and industry benchmarks. To accompany this, EMC (on average) receives a lower reimbursement for in-patient Medicare services per patient seen in comparison to its competitors. A result such as this is correlated with directly to the fewer amount of specialty services that EMC offers. In order for Emanuel Medical Center to be able to compete with other hospitals in its service area, it is imperative that EMC evaluates what services they currently offer and are capable to offer in the future to add value to the hospital, increase its revenue stream, and expand its patient mix. Currently, Emanuel Medical Center has not succumbed to its increasing financial pressurealthough EMC has had a negative operating income for five straight years. A negative operating income places EMC at a disadvantage because it limits the hospitals ability to renovate its aging building or hire new specialists to offer revenue enhancing procedures. EMC’s competitors, on the other hand, have large sources of revenue due to their mergers with large healthcare networks such as Catholic Healthcare West. Another competitor, Kaiser Permanente Modesto Medical Center, has extremely large financial resources due to the fact

Firstly, the core values of the United States as a whole are centered on democracy, capitalism, and progress. Merriam-Webster defines capitalism as, “ an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by state” (Capitalism, n.d.). As stated previously, the main function of CON laws are to allow the government to regulate the speed and amount of expansion a medical facility may reach. This violates the principals of capitalism because private owners no longer have complete control of their medical practices because the government regulates their growth and

The implementation of the healthcare reform to the people throughout the United States provides healthcare coverage to all Americans increasing the accessibility to quality healthcare coverage making it more affordable for families. Throughout this paper I will discuss how effective the healthcare reform has been for the state of Pennsylvania, describing what the positive and negative outcomes are, and how the it has impacted the community health within my state. I will further discuss what effects the health care reform has had on economics in health care within my state.

Smithson Healthcare System (SHS) is a not-for-profit health system which serves the greater community of Newland County and other rural satellite counties within the state. In 2013, SHS unfolded a new heart clinic located at their Smithson East hospital as a tactical response to some disturbing outcome data and the evolving healthcare environment. The clinic’s purpose was to improve outcomes for patients with a primary diagnosis of heart failure and respond to reimbursement changes associated with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). After three years of aggregating data on the operating performance of the heart clinic, an evaluation of the impact and success of the clinic is required. This analysis will offer conclusions and suggestions that will influence the future of the heart clinic’s vitality for consideration to Smithson East’s Chief Operating Officer (Chelsea Rigland) and its senior staff.

1) According to the World Health Organization (WHO), how could at least half a million deaths due to surgical error be prevented every year?

From 1991 going forward, the health care environment again experienced fundamental changes as a result of the deregulation of hospitals which according to Ingols and Brem (as cited in Swayne, Duncan, and Ginter, 2006) was occurring for the first time in a decade. According to the authors, the impact of the move was immediate. Following the deregulation, the financial viability of most hospitals was

Some major reasons that a free, unregulated market in medical care might night be optimal are: Imperfect information, asymmetric information, barriers to entry, and third-party payers.

The null hypothesis is rejected. The proposed hypothesis that medical surgical admission is higher than cardiac admission was correct. At the 5% level of significance, from the sample data, there is sufficient evidence to conclude that the medical surgical admission rate in Minnesota hospital is higher than the cardiac admission rate. Not only that the bar graph (see Fig 1 of attached spreadsheet) also show that all the hospital sampled in the research has a high rate of medical surgical admission compared to cardiac admission.