As discussed before, the real drivers of healthcare costs are not lawsuits, which studies by Johns Hopkins Medicine found are less than 1% of healthcare costs. The big costs are a result of fraud. Kindred Healthcare, a large for profit chain of nursing homes, will pay $125 million to settle allegations that it billed Medicare for
The Boston Globe reported the pattern of problems with the care provided by Synergy Health Centers. State inspection reports of Synergy’s nursing homes routinely show striking increases in problems since the company arrived in Massachusetts. Synergy’s expansion in Massachusetts has been rapid — the chain has purchased 10 nursing homes since December 2012 — and with the
The New York Times had an interesting article about the emergence of nursing homes replacing hospitals in providing basic medical care. Certain procedures and treatments require hospital admission, of course. But “the push is to reduce unnecessary hospitalization for things that can be handled in skilled nursing facilities,” said David Siskind, the medical director at
Kaiser Health News had an interesting article about the medical profession. The idea of the “15 Minute Visit”, where doctors spend a short amount of time with patients after waiting months for an appointment, sometimes hours in the waiting room, and have a list of complaints for their doctor, are becoming increasingly more common. Though
Bloomberg reported that the bankruptcy judge in the Fundamental Long Term Care Holdings, Inc. bankruptcy stated that Fundamental Long Term Care Holdings LLC’s owners engaged in a “carefully orchestrated sham transaction” by selling a Trans Healthcare Inc. unit in 2006 to Barry Sacks. Murray Forman and Leonard Grunstein (who pled guilty to perjury recently) were
McKnight’s reported that Skilled Healthcare Group and a Nevada hospice that it operates have been charged with submitting “tens of millions of dollars” in false Medicare and Medicaid claims, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. Management at Creekside Hospice in Las Vegas used the term “chart killers” to describe documentation showing patients were improving and