Healthcare Financial News

Hospitals can save more than $300 a day per seriously ill patient through the use of palliative care programs, according to a study of eight hospitals published in the Sept. 8 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

According to the study, conducted by the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) and the National Palliative Care Research Center, hospitals saved from $279 to $374 per day on patients in palliative care programs, and saved $1,700 to $4,900 on each admission of a palliative care patient. Savings included significant reductions in pharmacy, laboratory, and intensive care costs, resulting in savings of more than $1.3 million for a 300-bed community hospital and more than $2.5 million for the average academic medical center.

“The potential to reduce the suffering of millions of Americans is enormous,” said Diane E. Meier, MD, director of CAPC, based at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “This study proves that better care can go hand in hand with a better bottom line.” Read the abstract.

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Mike Leavitt on Sept. 3 announced that 11 more communities will join 14 others as chartered value exchanges (CVEs)--local collaborations of healthcare providers, employers, insurers, and consumers working jointly to improve care and make quality and price information widely available.

As CVEs, these communities will have access to information from Medicare that gauges the quality of care provided by physicians. These performance measurement results may be combined with similar private-sector data to produce a more comprehensive guide to the quality of care in these communities.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services expects to release performance measurement results for the 11 new CVEs by the end of this month. Read the press release.