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Shrinking of private practice may drive up health care costs: study
By Sarah Dorsey Aug 29, 2011 11:43 a.m.Over the last three years, more and more doctors have left private practice to work for hospitals. A new study has found that this trend might be contributing to the rising cost of health care, at least in the short term.
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Medicare and the Super Committee: Can doctors afford to lose two percent of their payments?
By Sarah Dorsey Aug 19, 2011 10:08 a.m.Medicare and other health care services could see their funds drained in any number of ways as, over the next few months, the congressional Joint Committee on Debt Reduction--better known as the "super committee"--looks for ways to reduce the national debt.
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First glimpse at medical error rates separates the good, the bad and the ugly
By Sarah Dorsey Apr 25, 2011 11:28 a.m.Between Oct. 1, 2008 and June 30, 2010, Medicare patients at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Yonkers, N.Y., suffered thirteen instances of severe bed sores during their stay requiring additional treatment, a rate of nearly 2.9 per 1,000 treated. At St. John’s Riverside Hospital, three miles down Broadway from St. Joseph’s, the rate was 20 times lower: only one severe bed sore was reported, even though St. John's discharged far more Medicare patients during that period -- 8,270 to St. Joseph's 4,541.
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What we don't know about doctors
By Nancy Watzman Apr 21, 2011 2:02 p.m.As political debate rages in Washington about how to reform the nation’s $509 billion Medicare system, a hearing is taking place in a Florida courtroom today about making data available to the public on how much individual physicians are paid under the program.
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Wall Street Journal sues for access to Medicare records
By Bill Allison Jan 25, 2011 2:56 p.m.The Wall Street Journal announced today that it's suing for access to data on payments that doctors receive from Medicare, which has been exempt from public disclosure thanks to a 1979 court case won by the American Medical Association. The Journal argues that absent data on the payments, it's impossible for journalists or members of the public to tell which doctors are billing the system improperly. "It's time to overturn an injunction that, for decades, has allowed some doctors to defraud Medicare free from public scrutiny," Mark Jackson, the counsel for Dow Jones, the Journal's immediate parent, said.
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Can we rate heart surgeries like blenders?
By Sarah Dorsey Sep 9, 2010 11:41 a.m.The Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, released a set of ratings yesterday for something rather more important than appliances: heart bypass surgery. Using data submitted to the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS), the Consumers Union has graded various heart surgery groups using a three-star scale, similar to the way it rates radios, cameras and washing machines. It's a set of valuable public data that could serve as a model for expanding the Department of Health and Human Services' open government sites like Data.medicare.gov and the Community Health Data Initiative.
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Lack of disclosure protects bad nursing home firms
By Sarah Dorsey Jul 8, 2010 2:31 p.m.The pattern of understaffing at Skilled Healthcare Group's 22 California nursing homes could have raised red flags for patients and their families, but ownership information is currently difficult to obtain. The company has been ordered to pay $670 million for violating California state staffing minimums. A portion of the fee, the result of a class action lawsuit, is intended to refund patients for the quality of care they received.
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OGD: Medicare data shows trouble spots for nursing homes
By Sarah Dorsey Jun 21, 2010 2:31 p.m.A couple of weeks ago we looked at one Florida nursing home to see what available government data could tell us about the quality of care. Today we'll take a look at what the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) data can tell us about nursing homes throughout the nation as a whole.
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OGD: A state-by-state look at Medicare payments
By Sarah Dorsey Apr 23, 2010 11:03 a.m.Click on the picture for a larger version.
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OGD: Future Medicare data looks promising
By Sarah Dorsey Apr 12, 2010 3:28 p.m.The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services appear to be on to something with their promised new datasets. It's a leap for an agency whose previous offerings were a confusing mishmash of poorly-labeled files. If they continue to add granularity as they roll out more features, journalists could have a useful and innovative set of tools on their hands.
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