CMS has launched its fifth annual healthcare provider satisfaction survey of the Medicare fee-for-service contractors that process and pay more than $370 billion in Medicare claims each year.
The Medicare Contractor Provider Satisfaction Survey offers Medicare FFS providers an opportunity to give CMS feedback on their satisfaction, attitudes, perceptions, and opinions about the services provided by their respective contractor. Survey questions focus on seven business functions of the provider-contractor relationship:
Provider inquiries
Provider outreach and education
Claims processing
Appeals
Provider enrollment
Medical review
Provider audit and reimbursement
CMS is sending the 2010 survey to approximately 30,000 randomly selected providers, including physicians and other healthcare practitioners, suppliers, and institutional facilities that serve Medicare beneficiaries across the country. Those healthcare providers selected to participate in this year's confidential survey will be notified starting this month. Selected providers can access and complete the survey on the Internet via a secure Web site, or via snail mail, fax, and over the telephone.
CMS will analyze the 2010 MCPSS data and release a summary report on the CMS Web site this summer.
The MCPSS was created under the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, which mandated CMS to develop contract performance requirements, including measuring healthcare provider satisfaction with Medicare contractors.
The $403 million All Children's Hospital complex in St. Petersburg, FL, will open on Saturday morning, the culmination of a major construction project that began in May 2005.
The 10-story, pediatric specialty hospital, located two blocks from the old hospital, is the central focus of the complex, which also includes a seven-story outpatient care center, a 700-space parking garage, and a central energy plant designed to keep the hospital fully functional for up to three weeks during a disaster or power interruption.
The move to the new hospital will start at about 6 a.m. on Saturday, when All Children's care teams will transport the hospitalized youngsters and their parents to the new facility.
The new hospital and outpatient care center will provide nearly one million square feet of space devoted to pediatric healthcare. Virtually all of the hospital's 259 licensed beds will be in individual rooms.
The third floor of the new All Children's has been leased to Bayfront Medical Center, which will operate its labor & delivery suites and a well-baby nursery under the name Bayfront Baby Place.
Other key features of the new hospital include the 97-bed All Children's Hospital Guild Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Occupying an entire floor of the new hospital, the NICU is one of the largest in the southeastern United States. It was made possible by a $4-million gift from the hospital's nine Guild branches across Florida's Suncoast.
The Walmart & Sam's Club Emergency Center, which is on the hospital's first floor, more than triples the size of All Children's existing pediatric emergency center. It was made possible by a $5 million pledge from 10,000 Walmart, Sam's Club, Super Center, and Distribution Center employees in west central Florida.
The Vinny Lecavalier Pediatric Cancer & Blood Disorders Center will occupy half of the hospital's seventh floor. Designed with a positive pressure environmental system, the center will allow patients whose immune systems are compromised by disease, treatment or transplant to avoid isolation in their rooms. A dedicated playroom for these patients—one of four in the hospital overall—is located within the Center. The center was made possible through a $3 million pledge from Lecavalier, who is captain of the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning.
The new hospital will also feature a rooftop helistop for med-evac helicopters transporting critically ill children. The helipad is designed to bear the weight and rotor span of most military helicopters, which are capable of carrying multiple patients.
Wheaton Community Hospital, the City of Wheaton, MN, and a physician at the hospital will pay $846,461 to settle whistleblower allegations that the hospital's admission practices violated the False Claims Act, the U.S. Justice Department said.
The government charged that from 1998 to 2004, WCH admitted some patients and kept others admitted to acute care when doing so was not medically necessary. The defendants then billed Medicare for the cost of these admissions, according to the DOJ.
The allegations against WCH arose from a whistleblower lawsuit filed in federal court in Minnesota. Whistleblower Steven Radjenovich, MD, formerly practiced at Wheaton Community Hospital with Stanley Gallagher, MD, a codefendant named in the settlement. Radjenovich will receive $203,150 as his share of the settlement.
Jesse G. Tisher, administrator/CEO at WCH, issued a statement Wednesday that said the tiny hospital with an active staff of four physicians, and 11 RNs, and an average daily census of five patients, was "pleased to have settled a lawsuit with the federal government without an admission of liability."
"The federal government's own reimbursement rules for hospitals like Wheaton Community Hospital are different to help ensure critical access hospital expenses are covered no matter what the number of patients served. The reimbursement rules do not encourage us to allow unnecessary admissions. Our expenses are subject to regular audit," Tisher said.
"In the end, the continued costs of litigation would have been more expensive than settlement. Wheaton Community Hospital determined that our time and effort was best spent providing quality healthcare to our patients and the medically underserved population surrounding us. We are committed to keeping our doors open to serve patients in need," Tisher said.
A maintenance man at Sanford Hospital in Rock Rapids, IA, was arrested after he allegedly confessed to using "peepholes" to spy on female employees in a rest room.
The suspect, John David Elias, 55, also allegedly admitted that he discovered, stole, and unsuccessfully attempted to destroy a hidden surveillance camera that was used by authorities to identify the "peeping Tom," says Lyon County Sheriff Blythe Bloemendaal.
"The tip came to us from an employee of the hospital. I sent two guys up and they determined that the holes were drilled. So, we knew somebody was actually doing it. There was a step ladder set up in the storage room to access the holes," Bloemendaal says.
Sheriff's investigators plugged the holes, and then hid a camera inside the storage room and pointed it at the step ladder. "No reason to go up the ladder other than to access the holes," Bloemendaal says. "It's in there for a few days and they go in to retrieve the memory card to review it to see if he had accessed the ladder and the camera is gone. So no doubt in my mind he goes up the ladder, sees the holes are plugged, starts looking around, sees my camera, destroys it and throws it in a dumpster in a town 20-something miles away."
Bloemendaal says Elias confessed to investigators, and told them where they could find the destroyed camera in a dumpster in the nearby town of Sibley. "Mr. Elias did confess to my detective of doing this," Bloemendaal says.
A telephone message left at Elias' George, IA, home by HealthLeaders Media was not returned.
Elias, who had no prior criminal record, was arrested on Dec. 27 and charged with misdemeanor counts of invasion of privacy, third-degree theft, and tampering with evidence. He was freed after posting $2,000 bond, the sheriff's office reported.
The restroom was used exclusively by hospital employees, and no patients were accosted, said Ed Weiland, president of the Sanford Health Network. "There was no HIPAA violation. This was an employee-only area. We did a complete search of the facility to make sure this were no other violations," Weiland says.
Elias no longer works at the hospital. "I don't know if discharged is the word or if he resigned. All I can tell you is that he is no longer employed here," Weiland says.
Here—in no particular order of importance—are a handful of issues, ideas, and trends affecting the healthcare HR arena that I think will be with us in the coming year.
1. The healthcare sector will continue to see job growth. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports have shown healthcare to be one of the few sectors in the overall economy that has seen job growth since the Great Recession officially started in December 2007.
Admittedly, healthcare job growth slowed in 2009. But an uptick in job growth over the last three months suggests the healthcare sector may enjoy a hiring resurgence in 2010. For one thing, the healthcare reform bill that is expected to pass Congress is supposed to insure another 30 million Americans, making the need for healthcare workers even more acute. And, even if healthcare reform doesn't pass, we will still be a nation that is aging at an unstoppable pace.
The graying demographic will demand more healthcare workers. Who's hiring? If recent trends hold up, hospitals will continue to hire, but the ambulatory services sector has been accounting for nearly half of the new hires in the healthcare sector. Census Bureau data also show that ambulatory services have generated more revenues than hospitals for the past three years.
2. The hunt for qualified healthcare IT workers will intensify. HHS has pretty much acknowledged that we don't have enough qualified workers to create and maintain the complex, interoperable healthcare computer systems that must be in place by 2014. That's why HHS last month earmarked $112 million in grants for various IT workforce development programs.
HHS also earmarked $60 million in grants last month for researchers to target "breakthrough advances" that overcome barriers to the adoption and meaningful use of health IT. It was only last week that HHS came up with a definition of "meaningful use." One would have thought that these core issues would have been resolved before the federal mandate on hospitals to invest billions on healthcare IT.
3. Wash your hands!HR will be asked to improve employee awareness on this very important—yet remarkably basic—healthcare issue. Be creative! Then send me your ideas.
4. Coming soon to a hospital near you: Unions. If you are still in denial about the full frontal movement on the healthcare sector by organized labor, you are probably in the wrong job. In December three large RN unions merged to form the 150,000-member National Nurses United. They are quite blunt about their objectives. "We are going to make sure we organize every single direct-care RN in this country. RNs and our patients deserve to have a national nurses' movement that can advocate for them," said Deborah Burger, RN, one of three charter co-presidents of NNU. This is not empty talk. NNU is seasoned, smart, well-organized, and they have the financial wherewithal to make good on their vows.
The Service Employees International Union is also expected to make a push for just about every other healthcare worker. Assuming that healthcare reform winds down in 2010, a Democratic Congress and a labor-friendly President Obama could rekindle their support for the now-dormant Employee Free Choice Act, the single most important piece of pro-labor legislation in at least 50 years.
5. Mandatory staffing ratios. It's quite simple. The best way for unions to increase their dues-paying membership is to make staffing ratios a top issue. It's coming to your state. Bank on it.
6. Cracking down on patient confidentiality. It was big news when a California hospital worker sold to a tabloid newspaper confidential information about the late Farah Fawcett's battle with terminal cancer.
Healthcare workers at other hospitals were fired for snooping into the records of Nadia "Octomom" Suleman and California First Lady Maria Shriver, to name a few. It's not just the high-profile cases in LaLa Land, however. Twitter, You Tube, Facebook, and dozens of other social media, create any number of new outlets for patient confidentiality violations in every town in the nation.
If you haven't had a recent discussion with employees about the importance of patient confidentiality, that would be a good way to start the year. The federal government wants desperately to show the public that electronic health records are secure from snoops and hackers and the feds are salivating for the chance to make an example out of HIPAA violators. Don't let it be you.
7. Healthcare sector employee health and wellness programs. You would think the healthcare sector would be ahead of the curve when it comes to employee health and wellness programs. I have found no evidence that this is the case. There are a lot of great healthcare role models out there, of course, but there appear to be many sluggards as well. This is a movement that will continue to gain momentum as more and more healthcare entities discover that it is cost-efficient and a morale booster.
8. More whistleblower lawsuits. I wrote in July that "all of the pieces are in place for a dramatic crackdown on fraud within the healthcare sector." This will hold true in 2010. We aren't just talking about the store-front, bogus durable medical equipment suppliers in Miami. We are learning every day of established healthcare organizations that are paying enormous fines to settle Medicare/Medicaid fraud allegations raised by whistleblowers.
The government is quite serious about cracking down on fraud. Whistleblowers—and their lawyers—can collect as much as 30% of the value of the settlements, which often are in the millions of dollars. "The more that healthcare fraud waste is in the spotlight, it is going to lead to an increase in employees who see this and decide to bring a whistleblower lawsuit and it's going to urge the plaintiff's bar to be more active as well," says Brian Roark, a partner in the litigation group at Bass, Berry & Sims, a Nashville law firm.
These are just some of the trends I've identified. I sure I've missed a few, so I'd like to hear what you have to say.
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Healthcare Trust of America, Inc., paid $20.5 million for three medical office buildings in San Angelo, and Corsicana, TX, and Fort Wayne, IN, the company announced.
"This acquisition allows us to continue our growth in the states of Texas and Indiana where we have an existing presence. These assets are strategically located on-campus with long-term stable tenancy," said Mark D. Engstrom, executive vice president of acquisitions at Scottsdale, AZ-based HTA, a self-managed, non-traded, real estate investment trust.
The combined 92,500 square feet of medical office space in the three buildings is already completely leased by subsidiaries of Franklin, TN-based Community Health Systems, Inc., a general acute-care hospital chain that operates or leases 122 hospitals in 29 states.
The three buildings' original developer, Atlee Development, is selling the properties with long-term leases in place. Each of the properties is less than three years old, and the acquisitions bump up the value of HTA's healthcare properties in Texas to approximately $236 million.
Since January 2009, HTA has acquired approximately $387 million in assets represented by 30 individual properties with about 1.6 million square feet. HTA's properties total approximately 6.9 million square feet and include 144 medical office buildings, six hospitals, nine skilled nursing and assisted living facilities, and four other office buildings and real estate related assets in 21 states.
