Monthly Archives: September 2013
Get Involved
Statesville Record & Landmark
A merger still in the works that would make Davis and Lake Norman Regional Medical centers part of a 206-member chain is likely to provide long-term stability to the for-profit hospitals.
It was announced at the end of July that Tennessee-based Community Health Systems (CHS), which owns 135 hospitals in 29 states, was planning to purchase Health Management Associates (HMA), owner of 71 hospitals — including Davis and Lake Norman Regional.
The deal is expected to close at the end of 2014’s first quarter pending 70 percent approval by HMA shareholders.
Subsequent to the release of the CRE Report on Hospital Consolidation we received numerous inquires. We will attempt to answer them but will do so within our existing resource base.
One common question is what impact will the CRE report have on FTC investigations? We have no idea but here are is one overriding consideration:
Populating the IPD
The document you are reading is called an Interactive Public Docket (IPD). The more informative comments made on an IPD the more regulators read the IPD. Consequently our readers are encouraged to offer their comments, whether positive or negative, on the content of an IPD.
The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (TheCRE.com) has analyzed a study published in Health Affairs which asserts that health insurance companies have insufficient leverage when negotiating with healthcare providers. The study has been discussed in Forbes and other major publications.
CRE concludes that the said study violates the Data Quality Act (DQA) and therefore cannot be used by any federal agency. In that the designation as being DQA-non compliant virtually renders the said study useless, CRE is inviting members of the public to review the study attached below and comment on its findings using the Leave a Reply function below.
Editor’s Note: We call the forthcoming CRE release of a White Paper to the FTC on Hospital Consolidation to Mr. Gaynor’s attention which will be published on this page on Monday, September 16.
ModernHealthcare.com
With the Federal Trade Commission showing renewed interest in policing mergers among healthcare providers, the agency’s new chairwoman has appointed a noted Pittsburgh healthcare economist who studies hospital consolidation to lead the commission’s Economics Bureau.
Martin Gaynor will join the FTC from Carnegie Mellon University, where he holds a chair in health systems management at Heinz College. Gaynor will head a division of the FTC that produces economic analyses to support antitrust and consumer-protection investigations.
Mid-Hudson News Network
| St. Luke’s Cornwall seeks to consolidate emergency department services | |
NEWBURGH – St. Luke’s Cornwall hospital has asked the State Health Department for permission to reduce the hours of operation of its emergency department at its Cornwall campus to 12 hours per day. Over the last 18 months, only 600 patents received care at the Cornwall campus ER between the hours of 10 p.m. and 10 a.m. The Newburgh campus serves over 60,000 patients per year in its ER, which is open 24/7/365. |
Officials say no layoffs are planned when Windsor Regional and Hôtel-Dieu Grace hospitals realign their operations, effective Oct. 1.
Windsor Regional Hospital CEO David Musyj said it’s both an exciting and nervous time for the staff.
Under the realignment plan, Windsor Regional Hospital will operate the Met and Ouellette campuses.
Hotel-Dieu Grace moves over to the Tayfour campus on the city’s west side.
Musyj says meetings have been held with workers to remove any fears they may have:
The CRE website was attacked with the result that had we not pulled down the website we would have risked loosing content.
We appreciate your many emails and we are working to continue to install state of the art early warning systems. We must , however, add that we have only had two major outages in more than a decade of operation.
We are particularly concerned that some of you could not use the website for the preparation of regulatory filings.
Editor’s Note: The following article was written by the Attorney General of Connecticut; note the absence of inflamatory statements wrapped in illusions, merely stark factual information.
George Jepsen
Attorney General, Connecticut
Journal Enquirer.com
Antitrust enforcement must be exercised with caution
I write to dispute Chris Powell’s Aug. 24 column, “Stop hospital mergers, enforce antitrust law.” Powell’s assertion that my office has been lax in antitrust enforcement in hospital mergers and other health care issues is wrong.