Urban Hospitals Fight Savings Measures
This is a tough fight for urban hospitals, insisting that seemingly inefficient care should be paid in full. I'd urge them to do more to keep folks out of their hospitals.
The issue pits hospitals in more rural states like Iowa and Minnesota, where spending tends to be lower, against those in areas like New York and Los Angeles, and revolves around a question that has bedeviled the medical establishment for decades: How much money dohospitals need to provide adequate care for patients, especially poor people who have not had regular access to health care.
A provision in the House health care bill, included over the objections of hospitals from New York and other cities, would order a neutral group, the Institute of Medicine, to conduct a two-year study of regional variations in Medicare spending. The bill requires the institute to recommend changes that would reward “quality and value,” and those changes would take effect automatically unless Congress objected by May 31, 2012.
