Compensation
Unsealed documents show UnitedHealth’s plan to cut ED pay
A report by Bloomberg said that unsealed court documents shed light on UnitedHealth Group’s efforts to “systematically” cut payments to out-of-network doctors for ED visits and mental health care. MedPage Today coverage of the Bloomberg report noted that documents showed that the company planned to “drastically” cut out-of-network ED payments to levels that would be well below national averages. A UnitedHealth Group executive was quoted by the report as saying that it wasn’t wrong to drastically cut payments to ED doctors, but that it would “impact” the health plan’s members. The documents came to light when United was sued by TeamHealth. United ended up winning the lawsuit.
Make American Healthy Again
What will Trump (and maybe Kennedy) bring to health care?
With Donald Trump headed back to the White House, the media has been filled with chatter about how health care will be affected. Much of the coverage focused on the potential role of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who Trump had previously suggested would have a “big role” in his administration. A New York Times article reported that Kennedy, who has a long history of promoting anti-vaccine conspiracies, told NBC News that he wasn’t going to “take away anybody’s vaccines” as part of his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign. Fox News, however, reported that Kennedy told MSNBC that “entire departments” of the FDA “have to go.” Kennedy acknowledged that he would need Congressional approval to eliminate agencies, but added that he would target what he called “corruption” in health care agencies like the FDA. A MedPage Today articletook a more comprehensive list at Trump’s history on health care and ideas he has floated on the campaign trail, from plans on abortion to Obamacare.
Finances
NES Health tells physicians it can’t pay them this month
NES Health, a staffing firm for physician specialties including emergency and hospital medicine, has told emergency physicians that it doesn’t have enough money to pay them because of a “temporary shortfall in monthly revenue.” A MedPage Today report said that an e-mail from the company’s CEO explained the company would make partial payroll payments until regularly scheduled payroll can continue. While the company promised to make all its physicians whole, MedPage Today said that some physicians its reporters interviewed are nervous about the company’s finances and wondering whether they should jump ship before they fall further behind in their pay. The company’s troubles follow bankruptcy filings by other large staffing firms American Physician Partners and Envision. MedPage Today reported that NES staffs 35 emergency departments in the U.S.
Technology
Medicare tightens rules for telehealth
CMS has made changes to its telehealth policies that preserve some post-pandemic flexibility but also roll back the rules to pre-pandemic requirements. A report in Becker’s Health IT said that starting Jan. 1, 2025, CMS will allow some practitioners to supervise “auxiliary personnel” using audio and video technology. Teaching physicians will also be allowed to use the technology to supervise residents who are providing telehealth services. But beginning next year, Medicare will bring back many restrictions on telehealth services, setting limits on where telehealth can be used (in mostly rural areas, for example). A big exception to pre-pandemic restrictions is behavioral health; Medicare will allow beneficiaries to receive telehealth services from home.
Communications
Secure messaging is everywhere. Is it effective, disruptive or both?
A study in the Journal of Hospital Medicine that came out this fall on secure messaging delivered these mixed findings: While 80% of participants praised the platforms for being moderately or very effective, 70% claimed the technology is disruptive. In a new Today’s Hospitalist Q&A, lead study author Michelle Knees, DO, pointed out that doctors feel they must constantly respond to all messages, interrupting their own work, because senders don’t reliably use “urgency” tags to flag messages that need an immediate response. The fix, according to Dr. Knees, is to establish best practices around secure messaging—and expectations that appropriate urgency tags will be used consistently as part of hospital culture. “Physicians will feel comfortable batching when they read and respond to routine messages,” said Dr. Knees, “if they aren’t as nervous about missing an urgent message that wasn’t appropriately tagged.”
News for hospitalists from around the web.
