Category: Medical Malpractice

In recent years, there has been a significant rise in hospital merger-and-acquisition activity. While hospitals claim the mergers benefit patients, recent evidence suggests otherwise. A January 2020 study from Harvard University researchers, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, looked for evidence of quality gains at 250 hospitals across the country acquired in deals between 2009 and 2013. The analysis, however, did not find any convincing evidence.

When you enter into a hospital, it’s unlikely you’re thinking about mergers, acquisitions, or executives making deals with other facilities. Instead, you’re focused on having your ailment or condition treated so you can get your life back in order. When hospital mergers get in the way of patient care, suffering patients may be able to take legal action. Let’s take a look at why hospitals merge and what a merger looks like for patients.

Leapfrog Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit “patient safety watchdog” organization gave the Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky an F grade. Only nine of the 2,633 hospitals assessed received an F for the fall 2019 grades. Since 2012, an F grade has only been given to four separate facilities in Kentucky.

According to WLKY, Jewish Hospital and other hospitals formerly controlled by KentuckyOne Health, Inc. are now under the ownership of the University of Louisville. As of November 1, U of L renamed the hospital as U of L Health – Jewish Hospital.

When people need to have a surgical procedure, they’ll likely think they need to have it at the hospital. Then, they’ll probably need to stay there until they’re cleared to go home. This isn’t always the case. Now, people can have procedures at a surgery center and possibly be home within hours after the procedure is done. While this seems like a solution to giving patients the surgeries they need and allowing them to get back home as soon as possible, there are many risks involved with these establishments.

When an illness or injury appears out of the blue, you may be uncertain about where to go for care. If the symptoms you’re facing aren’t life-threatening, but your doctor can’t get you in right away or their office is closed, you can head to your closest urgent care clinic.

While many urgent care facilities offer convenient medical services, it’s not always the best place to go. It’s important to know when going to an urgent care clinic is a bad idea, so you can make the best decision for your health.

Here are some situations where going to an urgent care center may be a poor decision:

All acute-care hospital in Louisville, Kentucky and those in Floyd and Clark counties in Indiana will see reduced Medicare payments during the federal fiscal 2019.

The reductions are happening because the hospitals did not meet the performance standards established by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program (VBP).

The VBP Program was implemented in 2012. It is designed to make the quality of care better for hospital patients and make hospital stays a better experience for patients. This program reduces all Medicare payments to participating hospitals by two percent and that money then gets redistributed to hospitals depending on their performance in a number of areas:

• Mortality and complications
• Healthcare-associated infections
• Patient safety
• Patient experience
• Process
• Efficiency and cost reduction