Huh? Double huh?

This story in the Boston Herald just didn't seem right to me. The lede:

Boston and two other 
Massachusetts cities are among five places nationwide with the fastest-rising medical costs [between 2011 and 2013], according to a recent study — which health care watchers attribute in part to skyrocketing drug prices and high rates of medical specialization.

Even if health care costs did riser faster here, how could that be attributable to drug prices and high rates of medical specialization? Drug prices in Massachusetts are the same here as elsewhere, and--unless there's something really weird going on--dosages in this state should not have increased at a greater rate than the rest of the country.  Likewise for specialization:  This has always been a geographical area with lots of specialists. Could this pattern have changed--in the upward direction--in the study period? Doubtful.

But then it got worse:

The study, conducted by consumer health site BetterDoctor, found that Springfield, Worcester and Boston saw some of the most drastic medical cost increases between 2011 and 2013, based on Medicare data.

Medicare data? Medicare rates are set by CMS for the entire country, with some local differences due to average wage rates, support of residency programs, and the like. There was no way Massachusetts would have seen a dramatically greater percentage increase in Medicare rates during this period.

Prices for treating severe mental disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital increased by 78 percent, the study found. Inpatient diagnoses cost an average of about $61,000 in 2013 — up from about $34,000 in 2011.  

Oh my gosh.  How'd MGH slip through almost a 100% rate increase?

Well, of course they didn't.  Very smart of them to not reply: "MGH declined to comment on the study." It would have been impossible to debunk the entire concept of the story in a sound bite.

I finally found the study on which the news report was written. As best I can tell, the organization used chargemaster figures published by the federal government on which to base the stories.  We all know those are essentially irrelevant.  But the BetterDoctor people have their own theory of how hospital prices are set.  Here it is in a nutshell:

Though the data is from Medicare, the numbers we used to calculate the fastest rising costs comes from the hospital’s procedure prices. The price charged to Medicare is the same price that the hospital would bill an individual’s private health insurance company or an uninsured person. The true amount Medicare actually pays for each procedure and associated bills is a negotiated portion of the overall cost. 

There is an impressive amount of fiction in these three sentences.  I won't bother to try to clarify.

But here's what's more striking than all of this.  The reporter actually got local experts to give reasons for the non-existent local relative price rises!

One said, “This information is consistent with state reports over the last several years.”

Another said,  "When you have a lot of hospitals and doctors in the market, prices go up.”  And, "We’ve seen significant increases in what pharmaceutical companies are charging for not only new-to-market specialty drugs, but pharmaceuticals that have been on the market for years,”

Garbage in, garbage recycled, garbage out.

Top 20 on the BMJ

With thanks to Bradley Flansbaum @BradleyFlansbau for pointing this out on Twitter, the BMJs voted top twenty papers for the last twenty years.

Here is one of my favorites:

Seeing what you want to see in randomised controlled trials: versions and perversions of UKPDS data 

Randomised controlled trials are objective, free of bias, and produce robust conclusions about the benefits and risks of treatment, and clinicians should be trained to rely on them; so says the gospel of evidence based practice. In this article we argue, using the United Kingdom prospective diabetes study (UKPDS) as an example, that there is one stage in the conduct of a randomised controlled trial—the interpretation and dissemination of results—that is open to several biases that can seriously distort the conclusions. By bias, we mean the epidemiological definition: anything that systematically distorts the comparisons between groups. We will argue that certain biases arise when different stakeholders assign their individual values to the interpretation of the final results of randomised controlled trials.

2, 4, 6

A beautiful example of confirmation bias in the New York Times.

The conclusion about the countermeasure is perfect:

When you seek to disprove your idea, you sometimes end up proving it — and other times you can save yourself from making a big mistake. But you need to start by being willing to hear no. And even if you think that you are right, you need to make sure you’re asking questions that might actually produce an answer of no. If you still need to work on this trait, don’t worry: You’re only human.

Classy, no?

This story demonstrates some pretty ugly things about the Boston healthcare market.  Admittedly the story originates from the successful law firm, but the facts seem pretty clear:

BOSTON, June 30, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- On June 29, 2015, the Suffolk Superior Court issued a ruling in favor of Whittier IPA, Inc. ("Whittier"), an association of doctors based in Newburyport, in litigation against Steward Health Care Network, Inc. ("Steward"). In September 2014, Whittier, represented by the law firm Shapiro Haber & Urmy LLP, filed an action entitled Whittier IPA, Inc. v. Steward Health Care Network, Inc., No. 2014-3029 in the Business Litigation Session of the Suffolk Superior Court. The complaint alleges, among other things, that in connection with Whittier's decision last year to affiliate with Beth Israel Deaconess Care Organization instead of Steward, Steward breached its contract with Whittier by depriving Whittier of millions of dollars in incentive payments earned pursuant to Payor contracts.

The Court's ruling yesterday denied Steward's motion to dismiss the complaint and allowed Whittier's cross-motion for partial summary judgment. The Court declared that "if incentive payments have been received by SHCN from Payors in respect of reporting periods during which Whittier was a member of SHCN, SHCN breached its contract with Whittier by failing to pay Whittier its pro rata share of those payments." 

Whittier's President, Dr. Salman Ghiasuddin, said, "We are extremely pleased with the Court's ruling. The Court has decided in no uncertain terms that Whittier is entitled to the relief it is seeking in the lawsuit."

To translate. Whittier was previously affiliated with Steward and, while it was, produced clinical results that merited incentive payments from insurers.  When Whittier decided to join another network, Steward decided to withhold those funds.

Classy behavior, no?

What a waste of time, effort, and money both to have to pursue and defend against the claims raised in this case.  Those are resources that would otherwise could have been used for patient care.

Is the world tax-exempt?

The Boston Globe reports that Partners Healthcare System is reaching out to the world to expand its business activities. Commonhealth set forth this theme by the new PHS CEO back in February.

Among the issues that we might consider is whether PHS should be permitted to retain its tax-exempt status as it pursues these commercial adventures.  PHS has often justified the higher rates it gets paid by pointing out its "unique" value to our community, so how should local patients, businesses, and insurers feel about those funds being expropriated for foreign investments?  How should the state and federal government should feel about their funds being used in this manner?

Will the Attorney General have any review authority on such matters?  Should she care that the corporation is taking its marbles to play elsewhere?

Urine trouble

"Put in a Foley," is a common order for a patient undergoing surgery.  This form of urinary catheter, also called an indwelling catheter, is very useful in that you can obtain an ongoing measurement of urine output, an important indicator of the patient's status.  The downside of a Foley is the potential for a urinary tract infection (bacteriuria). As noted here: Catheter-related urinary tract infection (UTI) occurs because urethral catheters inoculate organisms into the bladder and promote colonization by providing a surface for bacterial adhesion and causing mucosal irritation.

Some surgeons recognize this potential and so have standing orders to remove the Foley a day after surgery. If the patient needs help in voiding, a "straight catheter" is used as needed to empty the bladder.  Although this approach involves an insertion into the urethra, with some modest risk, the risk of a UTI is dramatically reduced.

In other hospitals, the Foley is the default for the duration of the patient's need for assistance. It is simply easier to leave it in, rather than to be concerned with timing the use of the straight catheter and the need for numerous insertions.

Why it matters.

Does this all matter? After all, what's the harm in a UTI? Just add some antibiotic to the patient's regime and kill those bugs. Were it so easy. It turns out than a UTI can have an impact on the patient's overall prognosis.

An old study from from 1954 to 1964 presented data data in England on paraplegics. They said, "The results where no catheterisation or only intermittent catheterisation had been used by the referring hospital are superior to those where a Gibbon catheter was used and infinitely superior to those where a Foley catheter was used."

An MD friend of mine noted:

They did not use p-values (maybe that was not the standard in those days?), but if you run the math based on the data in the article, you find that the rate of bacteriuria is 0% in the no catheter group, 7.5% in the intermittent catheter group, and 60.9% in the Foley catheter group!  

In a more recent study, a group at Brown University (Rhode Island Hospital) did a review of the trauma registry at their Level 1 trauma center from 2003 to 2008, which included over 5,700 patients. They found that after controlling for other factors like injury severity, diabetes, age, etc, patients with a UTI (who comprised 11.9% of the patients) had an in-hospital mortality of 9.6%, significantly higher than those patients without a UTI (3.5%, p < 0.001).

The first step: Guidelines

Based mainly on the risk of getting a UTI--and not necessarily considering all the additional downstream impacts on patients--clinical guidelines were issued by the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 2009.  Likewise, the CDC's most recent guidelines on the subject, also from 2009, said the following:

- Insert catheters only for appropriate indications, and leave in place only as long as needed.

- Avoid use of urinary catheters in patients and nursing home residents for management of incontinence.

- For operative patients who have an indication for an indwelling catheter, remove the catheter as soon as possible postoperatively, preferably within 24 hours, unless there are appropriate indications for continued use.

So, how are we doing?  If you asked the question in 2008, you wouldn't be able to tell. This article summarized the results from a survey of over 700 hospitals:

Overall, 56% of hospitals did not have a system for monitoring which patients had urinary catheters placed, and 74% did not monitor catheter duration. 

Four years later, another article reported severe underreporting problems in 2009:

According to epidemiologic studies, the majority of hospital-acquired UTIs are catheter-associated, with rates ranging from 59 percent to 86 percent. In this study, only 2.6 percent of all hospital-acquired UTIs were coded in claims as being catheter-associated in 2009.  

"You can't solve a problem you don't admit you have," is one of my favorite expressions.

Is it any better now?

So time has passed, and we should be doing much better, right?

AHRQ published some survey results in 2013.  This was not a full-scale data collection. Rather it covered about 800 hospitals who chose to participate.  Among this self-selected group:

There has been a decrease in CAUTI rates from baseline ranging from 6.3 percent relative reduction during post-baseline period two (months post-baseline) to 16.1 percent relative reduction during post-baseline period six (14 months post-baseline).

I'm not sure what this signified, so for fun, I went to CMS' Hospital Compare website to see how the hospitals who helped write the AHRQ report were doing on avoiding catheter associated UTIs.

St. John Hospital and Medical Center: "Worse than the U.S. National Benchmark."
University of Michigan Health System: "Worse than the U.S. National Benchmark."
Johns Hopkins Hospital: "No Different than U.S. National Benchmark."

Another expression I like is, "There is no virtue in benchmarking yourself to a substandard norm."

Even more so on Hospital Compare, where the benchmark is simply an indication of whether you are doing better or worse than the current national average.

Healthcare-associated infections are reported using a standardized infection ratio (SIR). This calculation compares the number of infections in a hospital to a national benchmark based on data reported to National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN). Each hospital's SIR is shown in the graph view. Lower numbers are better. A score of zero (0) - meaning no infections - is best.

• If the confidence interval for the score falls below 1, then the hospital had fewer infections than similar hospitals.
• If the confidence interval for the score includes 1, then the hospital had a comparable number of infections as similar hospitals.
• If the confidence interval for the score falls above 1, then the hospital had more infections than similar hospitals.

And how much less value is the SIR when you learn that the CDC found a 3% increase in the SIR rate for this disease.

You'd think that with such a loosey-goosey benchmark, the institutional authors of the AHRQ report--presumably the most committed hospitals in the country--would show up as better than average.  But they don't.

Where would you go?

On the search for success stories, I went to UHC, where:

Fifteen participating member organizations significantly reduced the incidence of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) during the UHC Imperatives for Quality (IQ) Program’s Infections Due to Devices Improvement Collaborative. 

Significantly?

Twelve teams achieved a 12% reduction in their CAUTI rates.

Let's say your local hospital tells you that its CAUTI rate is 1.4 infections/1000 days--a 12% reduction from previously.  This sounds great until you learn that some of the best performers are at 0.7 infections/1000 days.  Are you comfortable going to a place that has twice the infection rate of some other place in your community?

I know which I'd prefer. And I'd prefer even more a hospital that is totally transparent with regard to its compliance with the main protocol for avoiding UTIs in the first place--removing the Foley quickly after surgery.  Transparency suggests that such a hospital is willing to hold itself accountable to a high standard of care.  There aren't many who will do that, but here's an example--what you see when you go to the MedStar Health website:

Thoughts for medical school graduates

As I leave for an Independence Day blogging break, I offer a lovely address presented by a healthcare reporter to a graduating medical school class in Canada. Enjoy.

Now, to create cognitive dissonance, check out this article about internship.  Note this quote:

“The only thing that has changed,” Dr. Ludmerer told me recently, “is the nature of the exploitation.”  

And how is it that we expect young doctors to show empathy?

Who decides on non-profit status?

Here's a question for the lawyers out there.

A state court judge in New Jersey has determined that a local hospital is not really a non-profit and therefore should not have a property tax exemption.

Does the existence of a federal IRS ruling that the hospital is non-profit serve to insulate the hospital from a state judge's determination?  In other words, does the Constitutional supremacy clause hold in this kind of matter? Can the hospital win on appeal based on this logic?

In short, can the state find in one way for state jurisdictional taxes, based on its own logic, while the Feds find another way for federal jurisdictional taxes, based on theirs?

Trext helps patients and staff at the U.Mass clinic

Massachusetts and California are the hotbeds of healthcare-related start-ups, and I decided to join the board of one created by some recent college graduates.  It's called Trext and is designed to take advantage of smart texting, using decision tree logic to engage in interactive messaging with one person alone or with thousands of people simultaneously.  Especially it you are trying to reach a generation of customers who no longer read email, it is a powerful option.

Apologies if what follows sounds like an advertisement because . . . it is!  But I also thought my readers might be interested even if they are not potential customers.

There are lots of applications, but one that has been quite successful is in use at the U. Mass Amherst student medical clinic, Trext Virtual Wait.  The company explains:

Trext Virtual Wait is software that allows patients to send a text message to get a place in line at a walk-in clinic. It’s similar to the “take-a-number” system at a deli, but instead of a ticket, patients are assigned numbers over text message. When a patient is four numbers away, they are sent a reminder text telling them to come in. For patients who don’t text, they can be added to the line in person.

At the U. Mass walk-in clinic, 50% of patients were texting in and waiting remotely within six months.  The clinic spread the word with marketing posters such as the example above. However, mostly news of the service spread through word of mouth. 

The clinic has seen a 60% decrease in wait time in the clinic itself. This means students are able to go about their days (or stay in bed) without having to wait in the physical waiting room. A poll  found the patients more satisfied and they spread the word to their friends.

The peaks and troughs of traffic in the clinic have been smoothed, so providers aren’t as overwhelmed. The software has also been able to collect rich data to inform operations decisions.

Trext can also be used for messaging decision trees for health campaigns--for everybody from dentists to veterinarians--and a wide variety of other potential applications.

Did you expect otherwise?

In an example of a study that was not worth doing, John Commins at Healthleaders Media reports:

Only about 25% of internal medicine residents say they know where to find costs estimates for tests and treatments and that they can share those estimates with patients, according to a survey by the American College of Physicians.

The cross-sectional survey questioned more than 18,000 U.S. internal medicine residents who took the Internal Medicine In-Training Examination in October 2012. The study was published in the June issue of Academic Medicine: The Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

"I was surprised that so few of the residents knew where to find costs of tests and treatments and that so few of them incorporated costs into any clinical decision-making," says study co-author Cynthia Smith, MD, ACP's Senior Physician Educator. "Patients are picking up more of those costs out of pocket and so they start to ask 'what are the relative costs?'"

Dr. Smith shouldn't be surprised.  Over two years ago, Massachusetts passed a law--the first in the country--requiring health care facilities to make prices available to consumers.  The effective date of the requirement was October 1, 2014.  The result?

The Pioneer Institute reports:

It's very difficult for Massachusetts consumers to get information on the price of medical procedures, according to a survey of 22 out of approximately 66 Massachusetts acute care hospitals and 10 free-standing clinics.

"Most Massachusetts hospitals don't seem to embrace a culture of price transparency," said Pioneer Senior Fellow in Health Care Barbara Anthony, who authored the report, "Massachusetts Hospitals Weak on Transparency" with assistance from Scott Haller. "Most hospitals barely comply with the minimum requirements of state law when it comes to making price information available to prospective patients."

Pioneer sought prices for one common procedure - an MRI of the left knee without contrast. While it was ultimately able to get the information from all 10 clinics and 21 of the 22 hospitals, the process was time consuming, confusing and replete with long rounds of telephone tag. Anthony concludes that "busy consumers will not have the time to doggedly pursue this information and instead will likely give up in disappointment and frustration."  

The time it took to obtain the information ranged from 10 minutes in rare instances to six or seven business days, with an average of two-to-four business days. Clinics were generally more forthcoming with price data than hospitals were. A 2012 state law that took effect in 2014 obligates hospitals, physicians, and clinics to provide prospective patients with prices for a medical procedure within two days. Insurance companies are required to provide the data online in real time. 

If hospitals haven't even been able to comply with the law, what chance do residents have in answering such questions? In fact, I'd doubt whether even the 25% figure is really accurate "on the ground."  Do you believe it when the study reports: 4,187 of 17,633 respondents (23.7%) agreed that they "share estimated costs of tests and treatments with patients"? (There would also be no way for the resident to know if such tests or treatments would actually be billed to the patients, as they cannot possibly be aware of the details of the patients' insurance plans.)

Empathy without action is empty

One of the most compelling videos in recent years is the one produced by the Cleveland Clinic entitled "Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care." Since its publication in February of 2013, it has been viewed by over 2 million people. If you don't shed a tear while watching it, I'd be surprised. It reflected very well on the image of the Clinic.

Less covered was the fact that before, during, and after this time, the Clinic was cited multiple times by CMS for flaws in patient safety oversight.  Joe Carlson at Modern Healthcare documented this in a story last June.

A three-month Modern Healthcare analysis of hundreds of pages of federal inspection reports reveals the 1,268-bed hospital spent 19 months on “termination track” with Medicare between 2010 and 2013 as a result of more than a dozen inspections and follow-up visits triggered by patient complaints. 

The Cleveland Clinic, with 36 deficiency complaints, ranked 20th on the list of hospitals with deficiencies stemming from patient complaints.  

How can these two aspects of the same hospital persist side by side?  I think we have to understand that there is often a corporate separation between the public affairs side of the house and the clinical governance side of the house in the hospital world.  The former takes money and creative thought.  The latter takes an unceasing commitment to clinical process improvement and especially to transparency.

This was noted by one of patients who complained, retired Air Force Col. David Antoon:

Hospital officials refused to show the inspectors all of the notes in Antoon's complaint file, and the doctor who claimed to have done the procedure declined to talk to surveyors about how the hospital handled the case, CMS inspection reports show.

Antoon, a commercial 747 pilot in civilian life until the operation left him incontinent, is baffled that medicine has no organization like the National Transportation Safety Board to address safety failures. “You cannot keep things concealed in aviation,” he said. But in healthcare, “They're just gathering data points from patient complaints. And every data point is a damaged life or a death.”

The power of transparency has been asserted and documented time after time.  Most recently, the National Patient Safety Foundation made the case that true transparency--between clinicians and patients; among clinicians within an organization; between organizations; and between organizations and the public--"will result in improved outcomes, fewer medical errors, more satisfied patients, and lowered costs of care."  The Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety (SPS) Network, which originated in Ohio, is a clear example of these principles.

We also found this to be the case at my former hospital, where in 2008 our Board voted to be forthright about the number and types of cases that resulted in preventable harm to our patients.  At the time I noted:

We will be publicizing our progress towards these goals [of eliminating preventable harm] on our external website for the world to see. In other words, we will be holding ourselves accountable to the public for our actions and deeds. Our steps towards transparency have just been notched up a level.
 
We even used transparency to learn from one of the most egregious errors that can occur at a hospital, a wrong-side surgery. 

Years later, the importance of this approach--especially for the future leaders of the profession--was reaffirmed in a note I received from one of our residents (emphasis added): 

For me, a trainee at the time, the most important effect was that [transparency] underlined a shared sense of mission and purpose around quality improvement. The reporting didn't have a big direct effect on my practice--I just tried to learn how to put in central lines the right way, while my elders had already defined what the "right way" was. The indirect effect was as part of a sense of purpose, though.

The absence of a sense of purpose of this kind is toxic. For instance, if you have an advertising campaign that emphasizes our kindness or humanity, but we have no policies or practices that distinguish our kindness or goodness from anyone else's, it may be persuasive to our market as a branding tactic, but it's actively alienating to those of us who work within this system.

In short, empathy without action is empty. The resident concluded:

Conversely, if we walk the walk more than talk the talk, it's inspiring. Posting the data probably influenced very few patients one way or another--but it definitely made many of us feel like we were walking the walk. 

Stand up for your rights

A friend writes:

Here's a story for you about small advances in funneling technology.

First, listen to Bob Marley:

Now, watch the story.

Hold the dicta, please, and give us news.

Dicta is a term used in the legal profession:

The part of a judicial opinion which is merely a judge's editorializing and does not directly address the specifics of the case at bar; extraneous material which is merely informative or explanatory.

I've noticed a tendency on the part of the New York Times to include more and more dicta in its news stories, adding editorial opinion--perhaps in the hope of making a story more interesting to readers--but clearly including content that in previous years would be more appropriately included in editorial pages.

The problem with such material is that it is included without documentation of sources.  The other problem is that it can be of questionable accuracy.  But, because it is contained in the New York Times, it can carry greater weight in the court of public opinion than might occur if it were in your weekly community newspaper.

The Times' recent coverage of the King v. Burwell decision offered such dicta--overstatements and unsupported conclusions.  Let me give you examples:

The law has also, by many accounts, contributed to a significant slowdown in the growth of national health spending and the cost of Medicare.

Use of words like "significant" is troubling and has no place in a news story.  We probably don't expect reporters to use the statistical definition, but we are left without a context for the standard they apply as to what "significant" means.  (One definition I found was "sufficiently great or important to be worthy of attention; noteworthy.")  You judge in this case.  Here's the abstract of an article from Health Affairs:

In 2013 US health care spending increased 3.6 percent to $2.9 trillion, or $9,255 per person. The share of gross domestic product devoted to health care spending has remained at 17.4 percent since 2009. Health care spending decelerated 0.5 percentage point in 2013, compared to 2012, as a result of slower growth in private health insurance and Medicare spending.

Is this "significant?" The Huffington Post offered more context:

The historic slowdown in the growth of health care spending since 2009 -- the lowest rate since the federal government began tracking the data in 1960 -- has sparked a debate about its causes. President Barack Obama partially credits elements of the Affordable Care Act, such as reduced fees for hospital services, for reduced inflation in national expenditures, but there's no consensus among experts. The actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are among those who believe the phenomenon is nothing more than a repeat of normal patterns that occur during and after economic recessions like the one that began in 2007.

Hmm, a "repeat of normal patterns." And let's look at the Medicare portion.  Is this about a slowdown in the growth of the cost of Medicare or the amount appropriated to fund Medicare?  Cost would be a reflection of the actual costs of disease treatment per capita. Appropriations are merely an administrative decision to not spend as much, such as results from rate changes or Congressional sequestration. Enrollment is based on demographic trends.  CMS notes:

Let's look further into the "impacts of the ACA" portion. A 2010 CMS report identifies the major Medicare savings that would accrue in the early years of the ACA.   They point to pricing and enforcement provisions--not changes in the structural delivery of care--and note that these are the ones projected to make the biggest difference over time, as well:

As for the items entitled "Improve the delivery of care" and "Reform the delivery system," the jury is still out.

Melanie Evans at Modern Healthcare summarized the situation in late 2014:

The CMS published for the first time the quality and financial performance for individual Pioneer accountable care organizations, a small, select group enlisted for Medicare's most ambitious test of the payment model. First year financial results show health spending slowed as much as 7% (PDF) among some ACOs and accelerated as much as 5% for others. In the second year, health spending slowed as much as 5.4% among those that reduced patients' medical bills and accelerated as much as 5.6% where costs escalated.

Eight of the nine ACOs to walk away from the Pioneer program in the first year reported an acceleration in health spending. Of those that dropped out, seven joined Medicare's less risky ACO option, the Shared Savings Program. But the Pioneer ACO that reported the sharpest acceleration in health spending, Plus North Texas ACO, dropped out entirely after costs grew 5.2% faster than projected. 

Indeed, the CMS ACO program had to be redesigned to postpone downside risk to hold onto hospital system participation.  The Times story does not reference what "many accounts" refers to, but from what I can garner, are the changes "significant?" I judge not.

Let's now proceed to another paragraph of dicta from the Times story: 

Industry executives said the law had fostered a revolution in the delivery of health care, encouraging hospitals large and small to increase the coordination of care and the use of electronic medical records while minimizing the readmission of patients who have been discharged. Doctors and hospitals have accepted that they will be rewarded or penalized for the quality of care they provide: their ability to keep people healthy. 

We could spend pages dissecting this collection of gross generalizations. A revolution? (Again, I found a definition: "A dramatic and wide-reaching change in the way something works or is organized or in people's ideas about it.")  That is hardly the case here.  Some incremental change in some places? Sure. Business as usual in most places? Likely. Talk to doctors and see if they have accepted that the metrics being applied to them and their hospitals truly reflect the quality of care or their ability to keep people healthy. Talk to procedural specialists and ask if the law has made a difference in their clinical judgments to engage in invasive procedures. Ask people what difference the use of EMRs has made in their practice.

The point is that the jury is out on so many of these issues. We don't need dicta in a news story. We need news.  The main proven attribute of the ACA is that more people have access to health insurance.  That's victory enough.

Report on TOP 5

Back in November, I reported on an experimental program organized by the NSW Clinical Excellence Commission in Australia.  A summary:

The particular program I present here is called TOP 5.  It is lovely in its simplicity and low cost . . . and in the power of its results. It could be replicated anywhere there is a will. 

The idea is to come up with strategies to help caregivers who are responsible for dealing with people with dementia--and particularly the anxiety and agitation that can characterize this disease in the presence of certain environmental factors.  As described by the CEC, "TOP 5 is a simple process that encourages health professionals to engage with carers to gain non-clinical information to help personalise care. This information is then made available to every member of the care team, thus improving communication."

Well, now Karen Luxford and her colleagues have published a paper outlining some of the clinical outcomes of the experiment.  Among other things, they wanted to see if there was a documented reduction in falls and also in use of anti-psychotic drugs, but also they wanted to present more subjective measures about clinician and carer perceptions.  The abstract notes the findings:

Clinicians and carers reported high levels of acceptability and perceived benefits for patients. Clinicians rated confidence in caring for patients with dementia as being significantly higher after the introduction of TOP 5 than prior to TOP 5.

The benefits to clinicians included an increased satisfaction in their work and in their confidence in caring for patients with dementia. Overall, TOP 5 was acceptable to clinicians as a tool to enhance their work caring for patients.

Carer confidence in clinicians was increased when carers observed that clinicians used the strategies developed, indicating that TOP 5 assisting in the communication of this knowledge during clinical handover.

Both clinicians and carers reported that following TOP 5 implementation, the patients were less agitated and appeared more settled, providing indirect evidence for an improved patient experience of care. Staff used the TOP 5 tips to deal with agitation in hospitalized patients with dementia, reporting that this approach lessened the need for restraint.

A methodological difficulty was the absence of control groups in many facilities to measure changes in falls. Where it was possible to have a control group, this result was posted:

In the hospital where data from a control ward were available, random effects regression found a statistically significant decrease in all patient falls in the aged care ward using TOP 5, when compared over time with the control ward. Controlling for baseline differences, seasonal effects and existing falls prevention strategies, an average of 6.85 fewer falls per month occurred in the ward using TOP 5 (Ward A) compared with the control ward (Ward B) since the introduction of TOP 5. In the sensitivity analysis where falls were measured as a rate (falls/admissions), we also detected a relative decrease in falls in the ward using TOP 5, with the change in trend in the falls rate per month 23% lower in the ward using TOP 5 compared with the control ward since the introduction of TOP 5. However, this difference is only significant at a 10% level, not at the 5% level. 

On the drug issue, there were other tops of comparison problems, but this result was of interest:

Consistent data about pharmacy stock usage of non-regular anti-psychotics were only available for analysis from two participating hospitals during the TOP 5 implementation period and for the same time period of the previous year. One of these, a major metropolitan hospital, displayed a statistically significant reduction in the use of anti-psychotics following the introduction of TOP 5 with an overall reduction of 68% in average cost of anti-psychotics per month. At the second hospital, a principal referral hospital, there was no difference in overall expenditure or supply of most types of anti-psychotic; however, there was a decrease in the usage of Risperidone quicklets (a quickly dissolving oral medication) of 67 mg per month following the introduction of TOP 5 (P < 0.1). Both hospitals exhibited high-end usage of TOP 5 (average 14 and 24 per month, respectively). These decreases correlate with the findings that 61% of the clinicians surveyed perceived that there was less need for restraint (physical or chemical) for patients with a TOP 5.

Given these experiment design issues, the authors reach this conclusion--conservative yet satisfactory:

Our findings indicate that the use of a simple, low-cost communication strategy for patient care is associated with improvements in carer and clinician experience, with early indications of potential benefits for patient safety and potential cost savings to health services. Minimally, TOP 5 represents ‘good practice’ with a low risk of harm or unintended consequences. The TOP 5 strategy has potential for broader application by health services applying patient-focussed approaches to care delivery.

Indeed.  Worth pursing further and elsewhere.

So much for a paper-free society

A three-inch thick package arrived today in the mail.  It contained these documents from Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA to explain my Medicare Advantage plan:  Provider directory; pharmacy directory; formulary; and benefits summary. 

I fear that I will now get the same package once a year for the rest of my life, as the directories and such are updated.

Perhaps there is some provision in federal law that requires that such things be sent in paper form.  Or maybe BCBS of MA makes this decision on its own.

But, really, can't we get beyond this wasteful practice and just have these documents available on a website? Or, at least, give a subscriber the option to receive them electronically?

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Addendum:  BCBS sent me a reply on Twitter:  "We share your frustration, mailings like this are required to be printed & sent. We'll continue to explore paperless as allowed."

Thanks, folks!

Hey, UPMC. Don't forget to block the web sites, too!

Yes, in America.  Steve Twedt at the Post-Gazette reports:

Some UPMC hospitals are banning the Post-Gazette from sale in their gift shops, a move UPMC spokesman Paul Wood said was precipitated by “fairness issues” in the newspaper’s coverage of the health system.

At least three UPMC hospitals -- UPMC Shadyside, UPMC Mercy and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC -- say they will no longer sell the newspaper.

Twice in recent years, UPMC executives have canceled the health giant’s advertising in the PG, citing dissatisfaction with the way UPMC was covered in the news pages and how it was portrayed in editorials and editorial cartoons.

''The Post-Gazette is edited without regard to any special interest, and our news columns are not for sale, at any price,'' said John Robinson Block, publisher of the newspaper. ''We have been here since 1786, and have as our purpose the same goal that UPMC was established for -- to serve the public's interest, not a narrow purpose.''

Post-Gazette Circulation Director Randy Waugaman said this week that PG delivery staff members were told by gift shop workers at UPMC Shadyside, UPMC Mercy and Children’s Hospital that they would not display the paper for sale.

“Our people tried to reason with them,'' Mr. Waugaman said, ''but the gift shop personnel said that they were ordered to do so by their superiors and it was out of their control.”

I wonder. Does UPMC also block the Post-Gazette internet sites on their server? I hear that works well in China and North Korea.

Are they crazy?

Computerworld reports on a test to see if robotic surgery can be conducted remotely--1200 miles away--checking to see if the lag time between the operators actions and the surgical incisions and other tasks would be too long.  Excerpt:

A Florida hospital has successfully tested lag time created by the Internet for a simulated robotic surgery in Ft. Worth, Texas, more than 1,200 miles away from the surgeon who was at the virtual controls. 

Next, the hospital plans to test lag times for remote robotic or "telesurgery" in Denver and then Loma Linda, Calif. 

"Based on these tests, we have determined that telesurgery is possible and generally safe for large areas within the United States," said Roger Smith, CTO at the Florida Hospital Nicholson Center in Celebration, Fla., where the tests were performed. "Limitations are no longer due to lag time but factors associated with reliability, social acceptance, insurance and legal liability. 

Let's put aside "reliability, social acceptance, insurance and legal liability."

Let's just think about what happens when, in the middle of laparoscopic surgery, a complication occurs and the surgery has to switch to "open" mode--and quickly.

Is this what the CTO means by "generally safe?"

We've been swindled

This is a true story.  It is not--repeat, not--about the quality of care received by my friend at two excellent Harvard teaching hospitals.  He was very clear to me that the doctors and nurses and other staff were attentive, considerate, communicative, and expert in their treatment of him.

Rather this is about a utter failure of our government to insist on interoperability between electronic health records, a failure made all the more outrageous in that the government has helped pay for those EHR systems in one of the biggest subsidy programs in modern healthcare history.

The friend was suffering from pain and went to the urgent care facility closest to his home, one operated by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in one of the western suburbs of Boston.  The diagnosis was renal failure. A CT scan located the source of the problem, large kidney stones blocking the functioning of his kidneys. An ambulance was called, and the patient chose to go to the emergency department at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where his primary care doctor practices.

His creatinine level was over 8 mg/dL. (A normal level for men is  0.7 to 1.3.)

Upon arrival, he was whisked through the ED and was being prepped for surgery, but the doctors wanted to have a clearer sense of the location of the stones.  His kidneys were in no condition to have another CT with contrast, and so they wanted to look at the CT scan that had been taken just an hour earlier at the urgent care facility.

There was no way to electronically deliver the image to the BWH team.

The work-around? The BWH ED physician called his counterpart at the BIDMC ED, asked him to download the image from the BIDMC computer system and burn a copy onto a thumb drive, which was then carried three blocks away for hand delivery to the BWH team.

Fortunately, all went well for my friend.

Years ago, my friend and colleague John Halamka, CIO at BIDMC, told me that there was no technical reason that the BIDMC and BWH EHR systems could not be made interoperable.  But they still are not.

Indeed, this is a pattern nationwide, even though over 29 billion dollars of federal investment for EHRs were appropriated in 2009.  Whether you show up at an emergency room around the corner from your hospital or a thousand miles from your hospital, there is more likelihood than not that the receiving institution will not be able to gain access to your health record.  The term "meaningful use," the standard according to which the US government funds these systems, is laughably inadequate when it comes to interoperability.  We need to understand that a large number of healthcare systems, aided and abetted by some EHR providers, view it in their strategic interest to make it difficult for patients to move from one healthcare network (ACO) to another. 

We--the taxpayers and patients of America--have been swindled. Our national interest does not coincide with those corporate strategic interests.

And the fraud is likely to be compounded.  The next step in the process is a forthcoming Department of Defense procurement of an EHR system to serve the military and its dependents, whether being treated at military healthcare facilities or other facilities in the communities in and around our bases and other military installations. As I understand, there is no language in this multi-billion dollar procurement that would require the vendor chosen to achieve interoperability with those EHRs in community facilities where the government will send its patients--or where they might end up for emergent care.

Darius Tahir recently reported on Modern Healthcare:

A defense think tank says the government may regret its plan to lock the U.S. Defense Department into a 10-year contract with an electronic health-record vendor.

The Center for a New American Security released a report that sharply criticizes the department's procurement process for a new EHR system, which is expected to cost $11 billion over the life of the contract and has attracted fierce competition among four bidding teams.

“DOD is about to procure another major electronic (health-record) system that may not be able to stay current with—or even lead—the state-of-the-art, or work well with parallel systems in the public or private sector,” warn authors, who include retired Gen. H. Hugh Shelton and former Veterans Affairs Chief Technology Officer Peter Levin.

“We are concerned that a process that chooses a single commercial 'winner,' closed and proprietary, will inevitably lead to vendor lock and health-data isolation,” they conclude. 

We've been swindled once.  Will it happen again?

Loose talk

Is it just harmless joking . . . or a sign of underlying disrespect for a patient . . . or a symptom of a lack of professionalism. You be the judge in this story of comments recorded during a man's colonoscopy while he was under sedation.

(Thanks to KevinMD for the pick-up.)

And they tried defending this anesthesiologist in court on top of it. What a waste of money and time.

Ohio hospitals go to war against sepsis

The Ohio Hospital Association has declared war on sepsis, shooting for a 30% reduction in sepsis-related mortality. They note:

Sepsis incidence represents over 50,000 patients per year in Ohio or 5% of all discharges. Many of these patients continue to require additional healthcare services after surviving sepsis due to the complications of the disease. Early recognition and treatment can reduce the morbidity and mortality of sepsis.

The OHA Board identified and approved reducing sepsis in Ohio hospitals to be one of the key focus areas for OHA and Ohio hospitals for 2015-2016.  In 2014, OHA facilitated a successful rapid cycle improvement initiative for sepsis through the Leading Edge Advanced Practice Topics (LEAPT) program.  In 2015, we will be building on lessons learned during the LEAPT program. 

At a recent Quality Summit, James O’Brien, VP for quality and patient safety at OhioHealth, was the keynote speaker.  Jim is a founder and chairman of the board of the Sepsis Alliance.  The program also featured a panel discussion of representatives from Ohio hospitals currently engaged in actively reducing sepsis and monitoring improved compliance with bundles of care.

You can view the proceedings here. The video provides an excellent summary of the issues faced in early recognition and intervention for sepsis, and beyond. It is an excellent primer for those wanting to understand more about this disease state, but it is also a sophisticated presentation for those in the field.

Jim notes that sepsis is the most common reason for death in ICUs.  A patient arriving with sepsis has ten times more likelihood of dying than one who presents with STEMI, a form of heart attack that garners a lot more attention.  Nonetheless, he asserts, "We have a great opportunity to change the natural history of this disease--not over our lifetimes--but over the next five years."

Jim has a way of describing the disease that makes it approachable to laypeople like me. He explains, "We have an army at our disposal to fight infections.  What happens with sepsis is that your body starts attacking itself.  You suffer friendly fire as a result of the infection that has started."

The value in this kind of explanation is that part of the OHA effort is in spreading public awareness about this threat. It therefore has to be set forth in terms that are understandable to the media and the general public.

I'll leave you to watch the rest of the video to the extent you would find it useful.  I, for one, am very impressed with the OHA's commitment to this issue and also by the presentations Jim and the others offer to the people of Ohio and beyond.