RedScrubs
The Resource for Medical Professionals

Healthcare transparency is finally spilling over into the insurance market place where the public will begin to see pricing data from Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Wisconsin. The plan is to let policy holders and others see what the insurance carrier is contracting in terms of pricing for certain services between hospitals and providers.

With a wide range of prices in the Wisconsin area

Several lines of the page in all sorts of media have been devoted to the evaluative concepts of healthcare organization ratings and physician provider ratings. Many websites dot the web with such databases for patients of all types to delve into and either look for a new provider or submit a subjective evaluation based on their most recent healthcare experience.

Third party payers such as Medicare and Medicaid as well as privately based insurers need to refocus their attention on what is in the best interest of the patient. In an attempt to force industry change payers have restricted their reimbursement rates, increased premium costs for patients and employers, and developed lists of medical conditions that they [payers] feel are avoidable and thus will not provide any remuneration for.

Wal-Mart jumped into the healthcare arena with their retail clinic program called Convenient Clinics to provide improved access to care earlier this year and towards the end of last year when many media headlines broke the story of retail clinics. There was an immediate flurry of activity with store chains such as CVS in the Boston, MA area where some 2000 of these clinics were to be established over the coming months and year (2008).

From the New York Times published on May 6th 2008 comes a report that emergency departments (ED) are busy but fewer patients seen in the ED are uninsured. Data was collected from a study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine (AEM) and published on line on the 14th of April 2008. The AEM study specifically looked at a rise in ED use over an eight year period from 1996 through 2004 to see if the rise in ED use was associated with insurance status. Their conclusions showed that while there was a rise in ED usage nationally during the study period it could not be solely attributed to medical indigence.

Graduation time is almost here. Time to clean out the lockers, sell those old books that you don’t want, make plans for the summer, or perhaps get some new clothes for that job you were able to set up during a recent employment expo. Everything looks good; you’ve made it through college and are ready to face the world. So where are you going to get your health insurance coverage?

In the age of an ill healthcare system can small business owners survive without offering health benefits? Small businesses have been hit hard by rising healthcare benefit costs, with more and more small business owners canceling their health benefit coverage for employees because of the added costs. SurePayroll conducted a survey of small businesses recently in the Midwest which outlined the disparaging numbers of small business that can’t afford to offer health benefits to employees.

Establishing health insurance providers as non-profit entities is an interesting concept in today’s healthcare system. What would happen if the multitude of health insurance companies switched status from for profit to a non-profit status? Putting away multi-million dollar compensation packages for industry executives and replacing them with premium dividends and improved coverage for members, could it really happen?