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Mass. physicians group sues Steward Health Care

 

A physicians’ group in southeastern Massachusetts  called Compass Medical PC is suing the for-profit Steward Health Care System over what the physicians say are millions of dollars in overdue payments to Compass members.

The Boston Globe reports that “Compass has accused Steward of failing to pay bonuses to doctors and rents on office space and equipment. On Friday, the East Bridgewater-based doctors group sued Steward for more than $20 million in damages.”

“We have worked for over two years to secure this reimbursement and have complied with every request made by Steward to supply needed information and data, and now for the good of our providers and patients, we must take this action,” Compass chief executive Jamie Barber said.

The newspaper reported that “Steward, which owns nine Massachusetts hospitals, shot back with the threat of its own lawsuit, accusing Compass of engaging in ‘deceptive financial practices with the objective of enriching itself at the expense of patients and Steward.”’

“Boston-based Steward said …. Compass officials knowingly received at least $3.5 million more than they were owed from Steward. They said Compass executives refused to consult the Department of Justice about the matter and refused to settle the dispute.”

“Herbert L. Holtz, a lawyer at the Boston firm Holtz & Reed LLP who represents Steward, described ‘an egregious pattern of greed’ at Compass. He said Compass executives were paid $70 million in administrative fees over four years through their lucrative contract with Steward,” the paper reported.

Stewart asserted that Compass’s company’s statements reflect “an alternate reality that bears no resemblance to any actual event,” but Compass alleged that Steward hid important information in the dispute.

It looks like this case will get even nastier.

To read the whole Globe story, please hit this link.


Mass. report cites unnecessary tests

In a report,  the MassachusettsHealth Policy Commission criticized  physicians and hospital systems it said routinely overused  (lucrative) medical testing. Such tests play a major role in healthcare price inflation.

The report’s writers used insurance-claims data and information collected by the Center for Health Information and Analysis to study healthcare spending trends.

The report defined unrecommended  care as  tests and procedures beyond a patient’s needs.

Physicians at Boston-based Partners HealthCare, Boston-based Steward Health Care System and Burlington-based Lahey Health, among others, were found to “regularly order unnecessary tests and procedures.”

Providers in the report that had the  the lowest rates of unnecessary care were BostonMedicalCenter and the physician group affiliated with Cambridge, Mass.-based Mount Auburn Hospital and Cambridge Health Alliance.

 

“Screenings, surgeries and lab tests are all important aspects of keeping people healthy,” Partners spokesperson Rich Copp told The Boston Globe. “We’ll take a closer look at the data in this report, but decisions about medical care will always be made as part of the doctor-patient relationship.”

To read the report, please hit this link.

To read The Globe’s story on this, please hit this link.


Boston’s St. Elizabeth’s loses yet another president

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St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, Boston.

What is going on at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, in Boston’s Brighton section?

For-profit Steward Health Care System says it has a new president yet again at St. Elizabeth’s, Steward’s flagship hospital.

Steward said that Beth Hughes left this week after about a year as president. The company gave no reason for her exit and she couldn’t be reached for comment. She’ll be replaced, on an interim basis, by longtime Steward executive Joseph Ciccolo.  He’ll be at least the sixth leader of the hospital in as many years.

St. Elizabeth’s has 267 beds and more than 2,500 employees. Ms. Hughes had come to Steward from Chicago following a national search.

Steward is the largest for-profit hospital company in Massachusetts, with nine hospitals, including the former Caritas Christi system, previously operated by the Archdiocese of Boston.

The Boston Globe reported that St. Elizabeth’s “is challenged by its proximity to bigger hospitals with strong brand names {such as Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess} just a few miles away. But it has been making money, with operating profits of $13.6 million last year and $16.7 million in 2014.

To read The Globe’s article, please hit this link.

 


Steward under fire again for withholding fiscal information

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Steward’s Carney Hospital, in Boston.

Yet again, Boston-based for-profit Steward Health Care System is being criticized for withholding its audited financial statements for fiscal 2014 and 2014, The Boston Globe reports.

Becker’s Hospital Review, in summarizing parts of The Globe’s story, says that the Massachusetts agency that oversees hospitals’ financial health, the Center for Health Information and Analysis, “fined the nine-hospital system $37,000 for not filing the information on time. However, Steward has refused to pay the penalty and is questioning its legality, according to the report.

“Jeff Hall, a spokesman for Steward, told …The Globe the for-profit system has taken issue with the format in which CHIA has requested the reports be filed because it puts some of its propriety information at risk. He also said Steward is working ‘in good faith’ with CHIA to resolve the issue.

“However, the system has a history of avoiding CHIA’s filings. It missed the deadline for filing fiscal year 2013 statements by almost a year, and only filed after omitting certain parts it said contained proprietary information, according to the report.

“Steward has shared some financial information with Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s office, according to the report. This information shows the company’s operating losses totaled $75 million in 2014, growing from a $55 million loss in 2013, according to the report,” Becker’s said.

 


Marketing bigger and quieter ERs

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Hospitals are increasingly investing in emergency rooms, trying to make them as comfortable and attractive as possible to snare new patients.

Boston-based for-profit Steward Health Care System, for instance, has opened up a new $25 million emergency department at Morton Hospital, in Taunton, Mass., with 43 private rooms, doubling the size of the old department and making care a lot quieter.

A Boston Globe reporter, on a recent visit, found that the “larger space, designed to give the caregivers more room to work and patients more privacy, concealed that the department….was actually pretty full.”

“The project is the fifth emergency department redesign at hospitals owned by …{Steward} and part of a strategy by Steward and other providers not only to improve emergency services, but also to respond to the competition for patients from other hospitals and new rivals such as urgent care centers,” The Globe reported.

“Emergency departments are the front door to the hospital,”  Jay A. Kaplan, M.D., president-elect of the American College of Emergency Physicians, told the paper: “[Patients’] impression in the emergency department is going to affect how they perceive their entire hospital stay.”

“The upgrades are part of Steward’s efforts to attract more patients to community hospitals rather than lose them to larger and more expensive teaching hospitals, ” of which they are plenty in Greater Boston.

 

 


Partners invading urgent-care-clinic business

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Prestigious Partners HealthCare,  whose flagship is the Massachusetts General Hospital, will  open as many as a dozen urgent-care clinics over the next three years, in Massachusetts, in a move that helps highlight the more general moves in U.S, healthcare from inpatient to outpatient services and from the use of very expensive physicians to cheaper nurses, nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

It also poses a threat to nearby, Rhode Island-based CVS, whose drugstores are rapidly adding urgent-care centers. The prestige of Partners’  famous hospitals may take some business away from CVS’s urgent-care centers, which it calls MinuteClinics. It may also lighten the load a bit in some area hospitals’ emergency rooms.

Partners is late to urgent care in Massachusetts. Steward Health Care System, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Lahey Health, and others are already in the business, either directly or with partners, The Boston Globe reports.

But, The Globe reports, “Partners has advantages in its size and reputation. It is the parent of 10 hospitals, including Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s, and has 6,000 doctors, the largest network in the state. It also is planning more urgent care locations than most of its competitors.”

“This is more than a pilot for us,” said Dr. Gregg S. Meyer, chief clinical officer of Partners, told The Globe.  “These are meant to be extensions of availability and convenience for patients. We know we are not always as available as possible for our patients.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


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