August 23, 2010 The American Hospital Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of a lawsuit to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the Internal Revenue Service's stance that medical residents aren't students when it comes to exempting them from payroll taxes. The court agreed June 1 to review a lawsuit brought by the Mayo Clinic, which argues that the IRS diverged from the intent of Congress in the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, or FICA, with a rule change in 2005 that bars medical residents from qualifying for the exemption. ... FULL STORY
August 23, 2010 ProHealth Care, a two-hospital system based in Waukesha, Wis., reached a preliminary agreement to sell 51 physician practices, several clinics and a partial ownership stake in an ambulatory surgery center to Milwaukee's Froedtert & Community Health. Financial details of the transaction between the two not-for-profit Wisconsin healthcare providers were not released. A news release says the parties are still finalizing the purchase agreement. ProHealth has agreed to sell the physician practices, which include about 400 jobs in the Germantown, Hartford and Menomonee Falls areas. In addition,... ... FULL STORY
August 23, 2010 Allowing certified registered nurses to administer anesthesia without direct supervision from a physician did not increase risks to patients in the 14 states where governors allowed healthcare providers to bill the CMS for such cases, a study has found. The study, published in Health Affairs, comes as advanced-practice nurses of all stripes are speaking out about the need to expand their scope of practice in areas with physician shortages, and in rural areas in particular. ... FULL STORY
August 23, 2010 Two Texas nurses settled a lawsuit they filed after they lost their jobs and faced criminal prosecution for reporting concerns about a physician to the Texas Medical Board. Anne Mitchell and Vickilyn Galle, whose case drew national attention and financial support from dismayed nurses, agreed to share a $750,000 payment from Winkler County, their lawyers say. A motion to dismiss the lawsuit was filed this month in U.S. District Court in Pecos, Texas. ... FULL STORY
August 09, 2010 Although progress has been made, "overwhelming evidence shows that racial and ethnic minorities are prone to poorer-quality healthcare than white Americans," according to Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, Updated 2010, a position paper released by the American College of Physicians, an internal medicine society composed of 130,000 physicians and medical students. ... FULL STORY
August 09, 2010 The American Medical Association has sent letters to 45 health insurance companies nationwide asking them to verify that their physician rating programs are accurate by allowing outside experts to analyze them. Some 47 state medical societies also signed the letters. The AMA says it is concerned that health plans are not providing customers with accurate information when they rate physicians based on cost and quality. ... FULL STORY
August 09, 2010 The Mayo Clinic has launched the Center for Social Media, which according to the system is a first-of-its-kind effort to expand the use of services such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter among hospitals and health systems and their patients. ... FULL STORY
August 09, 2010 HHS has withdrawn from administrative review a proposed final version of a federal rule that requires physicians, hospitals, health plans and other specified handlers of patient health records to notify patients in the event their personally identifiable health information is exposed by a data security breach. In a notice on its website, HHS says it withdrew the final breach-notification rule from review by the Office of Management and Budget "to allow for further consideration, given the department's experience to date in administering the regulations." ... FULL STORY
July 12, 2010 Physicians would receive a 6.1% cut to their Medicare payments starting Jan. 1, 2011, under a proposed rule issued by the CMS. That reduction would be in addition to a projected 23.5% cut that is scheduled to take effect Dec. 1, provided that Congress doesn't act to change it. The proposed rule's creation follows a tumultuous debate on Capitol Hill over Medicare's sustainable growth-rate formula. ... FULL STORY
July 12, 2010 A cooperative of 25 rural hospitals and 70 physicians in southwestern Minnesota agreed to refrain from "coercive tactics" when negotiating health-plan contracts on behalf of its members, resolving an antitrust complaint brought by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC's administrative complaint more broadly attacked the joint contracting practices of the Minnesota Rural Health Cooperative, but a law passed by the state Legislature establishes a process in which state officials review contracts negotiated by provider cooperatives, putting the approved contracts beyond the reach of the... ... FULL STORY
July 12, 2010 One in five medical claims is processed incorrectly by health insurers, according to the American Medical Association in its third annual report on the topic. Health insurers had an accuracy rate for processing and paying claims of 80% overall.Coventry Health Care rated first in accuracy, with 88.4% of claims processed and paid correctly, out of seven major insurers measured. About $777.6 million in administrative costs could be saved by improving claims payment accuracy by 1 percentage point, the AMA estimates. ... FULL STORY
July 12, 2010 The CMS outlined several potential changes to its Physician Quality Reporting Initiative program, some of which could make reporting easier and expand participation among physicians. ... FULL STORY
June 21, 2010 The general public underestimates the amount of hours worked by medical residents, approves of capping resident shifts at 16 hours, and would request to see a different doctor if they learned their treating physician has been on the job for 24 hours, according to a recent survey commissioned by the Public Citizen consumer advocacy group and posted online by BMC Medicine, a division of BioMed Central, a British publisher of science, technology and medical journals. The survey included responses from 1,200 people who participated in 18-minute telephone interviews between either Nov. ... FULL STORY
June 21, 2010 The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a lawsuit challenging a federal regulation that disqualifies medical residents from claiming a student exemption from payroll taxes. At issue is an amended regulation the Internal Revenue Service issued in 2005 that sought to clearly bar medical residents and the institutions paying their stipends from claiming the student exemption under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, or FICA. The regulation excludes anyone working at least 40 hours a week from qualifying as a student, even if the work is related to a course of study. The University of... ... FULL STORY
June 21, 2010 Devicemaker Medtronic, Minneapolis, published its first online disclosure of payments made to physicians for consulting and research and development work. The list includes the names of doctors receiving more than $5,000 a year from the company for various services provided, and it will help Medtronic “avoid the potential for real or perceived conflicts of interest,” CEO Bill Hawkins said in a news release. In addition to the financial disclosures, Medtronic said it has adopted a set of policies and procedures aimed at standardizing physician consulting and transparency protocols. ... FULL STORY
June 21, 2010 A federal judge ruled that Tuomey Healthcare System in Sumter, S.C., must repay $44.9 million derived from Medicare claims for services referred by physicians engaged in prohibited financial relationships with the 274-bed hospital. Following a March trial in U.S. District Court in Columbia S.C., a jury concluded that a number of arrangements with physicians violated the Stark law against physician self-referral but that Tuomey did not violate the False Claims Act. ... FULL STORY
June 07, 2010 A multispecialty group of physicians employed by Avera in Pierre, S.D., is exploring a formal collaboration agreement with the local hospital, 60-bed St. Mary's Healthcare Center, with the goal of strengthening efforts to recruit doctors to the area. ... FULL STORY
June 07, 2010 Carilion Clinic, Roanoke, Va., has proposed selling an imaging center to Lake Forest, Calif.-based InSight Health Corp., in order to satisfy a Federal Trade Commission agreement resolving an antitrust challenge. Carilion Clinic acquired the Center for Advanced Imaging in 2008 along with the mutually owned Center for Surgical Excellence. ... FULL STORY
June 07, 2010 Five physicians and six other men and women face conspiracy and healthcare fraud charges for allegedly running a ring of California clinics that paid patients recruited for their Medicare eligibility and billed the government for fictitious care. ... FULL STORY
June 07, 2010 The Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati and former member Christ Hospital agreed to pay a total of $108 million to settle a False Claims Act lawsuit alleging what the U.S. Justice Department called a “pay for play” scheme for cardiologists. ... FULL STORY
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