Healthcare Digest 4/15: Some Healthcare Providers Anti Fee-for-Service

What’s interesting in the argument from “health care providers” against fee-for-service medicine is that there’s no significant health benefit to the consumer one way or the other. This argument isn’t about providing better healthcare.

“Health care providers are pushing the federal government to scrap the payment plan for medical services, preferring instead one payment for a patient’s entire care instead of separate fees for each item.”

Fee-for-service would seem to put healthcare providers in a more vulnerable position, payment-wise. The idea seems to be that providers would get guaranteed payment rather than risk a pay-for-service procedure getting turned down.

“I think we all recognize that fee-for-service is not going to be successful for us in the long term,” said Dennis Weaver, executive vice president for Southwinds.

Monday’s headlines:

Arkansas Ponders Doing Nothing: “What happens if a minority of legislators manage to block the path to a super-majority for the “private option”? What happens if the state instead goes with Rep. Bruce Westerman’s “do nothing option”?” [Arkansas Times]

Maybe These Guys’ll Get it Right?: “The Partnership for Sustainable Health Care, which is made up of leaders representing insurers, employers, consumers and a hospital, aims to put political muscle behind ideas about controlling costs and boosting quality.” [News-Medical.net]

Doctors and the Technology Gap: “Doctors are still kicking and screaming about being forced to use electronic medical records, more than 30 years into the PC revolution. We’ve had to pay them all off as a country to get them to quit using old-fashioned pen and paper. Hospitals have dozens of proprietary records systems that don’t talk to each other. While “big data” analysis is sweeping through and changing the way people forecast the weather, predict traffic patterns, and trade stocks, it’s always been hard for me to see how big data will crack into an industry as hidebound as healthcare.” [Xconomy.com]

U.S. Healthcare: Worst of All Worlds?: “Fareed speaks with Steven Brill, founder of Court TV and The American Lawyer magazine, and David Goldhill, author of ‘Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father – and How We Can Fix It,’ about the problems with America’s health care system.” [CNN]