Reporting – The Health Care Blog

The High Cost of Public Reporting

Sep 18, 2017• 31

ANISH KOKA MD

In an age where big data is king and doctors are urged to treat populations, the journey of one man still has much to tell us. This is a tale of a man named Joe.

Joseph Carrigan was a bear of a man – though his wife would say he was more teddy than bear. He loved guitar playing, and camp horror movies. Those who knew him well said he had a kind heart, a quick wit and loved cats.

I knew none of these things when I met Joe in the Emergency Department on a Sunday afternoon. I had been called because of an abnormal electrocardiogram – the ER team was worried he could be having a heart attack. Not able to make sense of the story on the phone, I was in to try to sort it out. Joe was gruff, short with his answers – but clearly something just wasn’t right. He was only 54 but had more problems than the average 50 year old. Progressive calcification of his aortic valve some years ago had caused intolerable shortness of breath resulting in replacement with an artificial valve. Longstanding diabetes had resulted in kidney failure and dialysis, and most recently abnormal liver tests had revealed the presence of the early stages of cirrhosis from hepatitis C. Yet Joe continued to live an active life – with only a tight circle of family and friends aware of the illnesses beneath the surface.Continue reading…

MACRA Comment: CMS + MIPS/APM = Death of the Private Practice Physician

Jul 5, 2016• 5

By NIRAN AL-AGBA, MD

flying cadeucii Small, independent private practices are closing, increasing numbers of physicians are retiring early, and fewer medical school graduates are choosing primary care. The old-fashioned practice my father and I have built is a dying entity. Parents say coming to see us for an appointment feels more like a visit with a friend than a medical encounter. I am fighting for the subsistence of rural primary care practices. Most will not survive MACRA proposed changes to the reimbursement structure.

Seven days ago, I attended an “informational listening session,” sponsored by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for rural physicians to learn more about the new MACRA proposal known as MIPS/APM (Merit-Based Incentive Payment System/Alternative Payment Model.) This new plan will penalize 7 out of 10 small practices with 1-2 physicians in this country. Why? Because they will be overwhelmed complying with fruitless statistical reporting demands that do nothing to enhance the quality of care, instead of spending precious time seeing patients.

The “Business Case” For Patient Safety

Mar 20, 2015• 16

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

Twenty years ago this month, the Boston Globe disclosed that health columnist Betsy Lehman, a 39-year-old mother of two, had been killed by a drug overdose during treatment for breast cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Center. In laying out a grim trail of preventable mistakes at a renowned institution, the Globe prompted local soul searching and a new focus on patient safety nationally.

Although I didn’t know Betsy personally, we were about the same age, had two kids about the same ages and were in the same profession. (I, too, was a health care journalist.) That’s why I was particularly disappointed by a recent conference celebrating the reopening of the Betsy Lehman Center for Patient Safety and Medical Error Reduction. It was heavy on statistics and poll results; e.g., one in four Massachusetts adults say they’ve seen an error in their own care or the care of someone close to them.

While it’s true that Boston is the epicenter of thinking, writing and speaking about patient safety, words do not always translate into deeds.

Life Saving Errors

Mar 26, 2011• 15

By DENNIS GRACE

On March 28, 1979 the Three-Mile Island Unit-2 nuclear power plant experienced a feed system failure which prevented the steam generators from removing heat from the plant. The reactor automatically shutdown but, without the feed system to cool the primary, the pressure in the primary system (the nuclear portion of the plant) began to increase. In order to prevent that pressure from becoming excessive, a relief valve opened. The valve should have re-closed once the pressure dropped by a small amount, but it didn’t. The only indication available in the control room showed the valve in the closed position, but that indication was erroneous, representing only that the signal to close the valve (pressure below a set value) had been sent to the valve. Nothing in the system verified the actual valve position. This stuck-open valve caused the pressure to continue to decrease in the system (and ultimately provided a path for spewing thousands of curies of radioactive material into the atmosphere), but the false shut indication prevented the operators from taking actions to mitigate their severe loss of coolant accident.

The primary relief valve design had a history of sticking. That same valve had been involved in at least nine other minor incidents prior to the TMI incident. Most notably, eighteen months before TMI, a similar incident had occurred in another nuclear plant involving a loss of feed and rising temperatures shutting down the plant. In that incident, the plant was just starting up after a maintenance shutdown, so the power level and temperature of the system were not as dangerously high as at Three-Mile Island.