For-Profit Hospital Chain Schemes to Inflate Bills (NYT)

[jsr]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/business/hospital-chain-said-to-scheme-to-inflate-bills.html

Hospital Chain Said to Scheme to Inflate Bills
By JULIE CRESWELL and REED ABELSON | JAN. 23, 2014

Every day the scorecards went up, where they could be seen by all of the hospital’s emergency room doctors.

Physicians hitting the target to admit at least half of the patients over 65 years old who entered the emergency department were color-coded green. The names of doctors who were close were yellow. Failing physicians were red.

The scorecards, according to one whistle-blower lawsuit, were just one of the many ways that Health Management Associates, a for-profit hospital chain based in Naples, Fla., kept tabs on an internal strategy that regulators and others say was intended to increase admissions, regardless of whether a patient needed hospital care, and pressure the doctors who worked at the hospital.

This month, the Justice Department said it had joined eight separate whistle-blower lawsuits against H.M.A. in six states. The lawsuits describe a wide-ranging strategy that is said to have relied on a mix of sophisticated software systems, financial incentives and threats in an attempt to inflate the company’s payments from Medicare and Medicaid by admitting patients like an infant whose temperature was a normal 98.7 degrees for a “fever.”

[dylan33]

1. For-Profit

Is there any other kind? I know they like to pretend but really now. Mercy really means Money.

[siligut]

2. Lots of money to be made off of sick people

Federal regulators have multiple investigations into questionable hospital admissions, procedures and billings at many hospital systems, including the country’s largest, HCA. Community Health Systems, the Franklin, Tenn., company from which H.M.A. hired its former chief executive in 2008, faces similar accusations that it inappropriately increased admissions. Community is in discussions with federal regulators over a settlement regarding some of the accusations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/business/hospital-chain-said-to-scheme-to-inflate-bills.html

Rick Scott was co-founder and CEO of Columbia/HCA in the 1990s, it was through medicare fraud that he made his money. They take advantage of sick people and in some cases they actually do unnecessary procedures.

[DeSwiss]

3. Quelle Surprise!

What the hell is it about the words:

[center][font size=10]FOR PROFIT [/font][/center]

....do people not understand???

These healthcare-vampirers get their blood from the human condition. The worse those conditions, the more money for them.

The more ''patients'' the more blood money for them.

The less they pay to care for each patient, the more blood money for them.

- See? This is how [font size=10]FOR PROFIT [/font] vampirism works......

K&R