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The evolution of "transplant tourism" drives home the point that people are willing to go to extreme lengths to procure an organ, according to Leslie M. Whetstine, PhD, an assistant professor of philosophy at Walsh University in North Canton, OH. "Despite the fact that the public overwhelmingly supports organ donation in this country, our actions unfortunately do not reflect that sentiment," she says.
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Approximately one in five (22%) out of 608 critical care physicians surveyed reported always providing surrogates of critically ill adult patients with a recommendation about limiting life support, while one in 10 (11%) reported rarely or never doing so, according to a just-published study.1 Surrogates' desires for recommendations and physicians' agreements with surrogates' likely decisions may influence whether recommendations are provided.
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Linking payment to patient satisfaction could have a profound impact on the doctor-patient relationship, argues James N. Kirkpatrick, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania who is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy.
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Prescribing potentially addictive medications "is often a very challenging situation for physicians," says David A. Fleming, MD, MA, FACP, professor and chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine and director of the Center for Health Ethics at University of Missouri in Columbia.
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It's a "tremendous victory to have something approaching universal access" as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but the resulting increase in underinsured patients will pose ethical challenges for providers, according to Joseph J. Fins, MD, MACP, chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of medical ethics at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Center in New York City.
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For one month, patient access leaders at Witham Health Services in Lebanon, IN, targeted one simple but important change to improve the level of customer service given by registrars.
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Emergency department (ED) collections jumped from $55,000 to $120,000 annually after eligibility software was implemented at Mary Rutan Hospital in Bellefontaine, OH, reports John E. Kivimaki, director of patient accounts.
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While many patient access departments can give patients the estimated full cost of a service, to date, very few are able to provide an accurate out-of-pocket estimate, says Becky Peters, regional director of patient access services for Sutter Health West Bay in San Francisco.
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that health insurance companies can be a pain for patients. What may be a surprise is that hospitals often complain, too, for the same reasons: denied claims, low reimbursement, late reimbursement, and thickets of red tape.
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Annual revenue collected for Medicaid patients has doubled at Trinity Regional Health System in Rock Island, IL, since January 2010, since the screening process is now done internally instead of by a contracted company.
