Top 10 metro areas for emergency department satisfaction
Healthcare Finance News
Patient satisfaction with hospital emergency departments is strongest in Miami, Hartford, Conn., and Indianapolis found healthcare consulting firm Press Ganey Associates in its annual ED patient satisfaction survey. The nationwide survey gauged the experiences of more than 1.6 million patients treated at 1,908 hospitals from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2010. One important lesson hospitals can draw from the report is that patient satisfaction with the ED experience has a direct correlation to a hospital’s bottom line.More

Emergency departments turn to texting wait times
American Medical News
Publicizing emergency department wait times through websites and electronic billboards has been a growing trend. Now many of those hospitals are adding a texting service that allows patients to receive up-to-date information on their mobile phones while en route to the hospital. "As people use their mobile devices more and people want transparency, this is just another piece of it," said Doug Spear, administrative director of marketing and communications for Shawnee Mission (Kan.) Medical Center.More

Health care key is access not cost
MedPage Today
While financial hardship can serve as an obstacle to medical care, long wait-times for appointments and inability to take time off work are more common barriers to health care access, a new study found. While nearly 19 percent of Americans reported costs as a factor in preventing them from seeking necessary healthcare, 21 percent of U.S. adults surveyed said they have delayed care for non-financial reasons, according to a study published online in the journal Health Services Research. More

Digitizing medical records will create tech jobs, advocates say
Las Vegas Review Journal
For the information-technology industry, health care represents the next frontier for job growth, technology professionals were told recently. Federal stimulus dollars for digitizing medical records will mean that IT professionals and hospitals and doctors' offices must work closely to bring about this next big transformation for the health care industry.More

S&P: Medicare costs rise at slowest pace in 6 years
Reuters via Yahoo! News
Growth in hospital revenue from Medicare patients was roughly one-third the rate seen from patients on private health insurance during the past year, according to data from Standard & Poor's. Medicare revenue rose 2.5 percent per patient in the year before June, the slowest rate since S&P started keeping track in January 2005, the S&P Healthcare Economic Index showed last week. Revenue for patients on commercial insurance rose 7.48 percent in the year ending in June.More

Medicare managed care plans can control health market costs
Newswise.com
Medicare managed health care plans can be effective in reducing costs and encouraging appropriate care, according to a new study by researchers at RTI International, Arizona State University, the University of California, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Our study showed that even though fee-for-service constituents were not enrolled in Medicare managed care plans, those plans broadly influenced adoption of technology and practice styles among providers in the markets where fee-for-service constituents lived,” said Lee Mobley, senior fellow in spatial science and health economics at RTI International. “This sort of 'spillover effect' from managed care onto market participants is a well-known phenomenon studied by health economists."More

Trade Commission challenges a hospital merger
The New York Times
Obama administration officials have been roaming the country, talking up their vision of a future in which doctors and hospitals team up to provide better care at lower cost. But a starkly different picture is unfolding this summer in a courtroom here, where lawyers from the Federal Trade Commission have been challenging a hospital merger in Toledo, Ohio. The lawyers have put the transaction under a virtual microscope, taking hundreds of hours of testimony intended to show that the merger would stifle competition and drive up health care costs. In the process, they are scrutinizing details of the Toledo health care market that might seem more appropriate for investigation by state legislators or county commissioners.More

Emergency department visits may rise due to shortages
Third Age
The emergency department may continue to experience a rising number of visits, thanks to shortages in the number and availability of primary care physicians, says a new study. The rising numbers may come despite the expanded health insurance coverage required by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), reports ScienceDaily. The study was published in Archives of Internal Medicine and was written by the University of Colorado School of Medicine.More

Economy disrupts doctors' retirement plans
American Medical News
According to a recent survey issued by the physician staffing agency Jackson & Coker, 52 percent of the 522 doctors responding had changed their retirement plans since the 2007-09 recession. About 70 percent of those changing plans said they will work longer until retirement because personal savings had been gutted or had not grown as rapidly as anticipated. There was no significant difference by specialty.More