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This was on 60 Minutes last night, but even you MSM-hating free-market fundamentalists should recognize that firing doctors for not meeting arbitrary hospital-admission quotas is just wrong -- and just another example of the private-sector waste and fraud that costs Medicare and private insurance policy-holders so much money.
Cliff Cloonan is a retired colonel who spent 21 years as an Army doctor before joining the Carlisle Regional Medical Center in Pennsylvania as the assistant emergency room director. Dr. Scott Rankin worked in the same department. Both say they were told by HMA and its ER staffing contractor, EmCare, that if they didn't start admitting more patients to the hospital, they would lose their jobs.
Cliff Cloonan: My department chief said, we will admit 20 percent of our patients or somebody's going to get fired.
Steve Kroft: What's wrong with admitting 20 percent?
Scott Rankin: In a relatively rural, limited resource community hospital your admission rate out of the emergency department, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 percent.
Steve Kroft: And they wanted 20?
Scott Rankin: Correct. They wanted 20.
Cliff Cloonan: There's no way that you can do that and not have it be fraudulent because you're not admitting on the basis of medical requirements, you're basing it on strictly an arbitrary number that has been pulled out.
Steve Kroft: All sorts of businesses set quotas. What's wrong with this?
Scott Rankin: We're not building widgets. We're taking care of patients who are ill and come in to the emergency department.
Now can you see how profit-über-alles isn't necessarily the best way to operate a health-care system?
Its illegal besides which if can be proven can be prosecuted like any other crime . Lots of medciare fraud and most involves patients npaid for treatment not received.
Its illegal besides which if can be proven can be prosecuted like any other crime . Lots of medciare fraud and most involves patients npaid for treatment not received.
It is rampant texdav,
Tenet healthcare is notorious for admitting unnecessarily and doing procedures unnecesssarily.
Free market -Profit based healthcare has too many detriments.
If Profit is put ahead of patient health one time it is too much- and we know its alot more than one time.
I'm rural now and there's lots more hospital stays out here with the kids in school than there were in the city schools I was in. Seems to be pretty routine to put a kid in the hospital overnight.
I'm rural now and there's lots more hospital stays out here with the kids in school than there were in the city schools I was in. Seems to be pretty routine to put a kid in the hospital overnight.
Free-market fundamentalists will blame the lawyers for this, and clamor for tort reform -- but as one of the doctors pointed out in the 60 Minutes piece, admitting people, particularly elderly people, to the hospital unnecessarily often poses MORE health risks (MRSA and so on) than sending them home.
Affordable health care will not happen until we remove private sector insurance and ownership of the facilites. As the requirement for care is not subject to normal consumer economics (you cannot shop for price or select the time) the provision of the care should not be left to the private sector with all of its cheating to increase profits.
Free-market fundamentalists will blame the lawyers for this, and clamor for tort reform -- but as one of the doctors pointed out in the 60 Minutes piece, admitting people, particularly elderly people, to the hospital unnecessarily often poses MORE health risks (MRSA and so on) than sending them home.
But they make one heck of a profit! Next time you have a hospital visit ask for an itemized bill. You will be shocked how much they charge for a piece of gauze.
Lawsuits are an issue but not under this topic. This is all about making quotas to pay the shareholders.
Free-market fundamentalists will blame the lawyers for this, and clamor for tort reform -- but as one of the doctors pointed out in the 60 Minutes piece, admitting people, particularly elderly people, to the hospital unnecessarily often poses MORE health risks (MRSA and so on) than sending them home.
No "free market" here where I am ..these are medicaid people.
Affordable health care will not happen until we remove private sector insurance and ownership of the facilites. As the requirement for care is not subject to normal consumer economics (you cannot shop for price or select the time) the provision of the care should not be left to the private sector with all of its cheating to increase profits.
Agreed, Healthcare does not lend itself to be bought and sold in the free market.
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Affordable health care
