{"id":185828,"date":"2014-08-07T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/08\/07\/so-how-is-that-whole-efficiency-of-the-whole-profit-driven-market-based-thing-working-in-healthcare\/"},"modified":"2014-08-07T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-08T00:00:00","slug":"so-how-is-that-whole-efficiency-of-the-whole-profit-driven-market-based-thing-working-in-healthcare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/08\/07\/so-how-is-that-whole-efficiency-of-the-whole-profit-driven-market-based-thing-working-in-healthcare\/","title":{"rendered":"So, How is that Whole Efficiency of the Whole Profit Driven Market Based Thing Working In Healthcare?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out as more and more for-profit hospices are entering the market, more and more of hospice patients are leaving those hospices under their own power<\/a>, largely because the for-profit hospices are taking non-terminal patients, and driving out expensive terminal ones, in order to maximize their bottom line:<\/p>\n

At hundreds of U.S. hospices, more than one in three patients are dropping the service before dying, new research shows, a sign of trouble in an industry supposed to care for patients until death.<\/span>

<\/span> When that many patients are leaving a hospice alive, experts said, the agencies are likely to be either driving them away with inadequate care or enrolling patients who aren\u2019t really dying in order to pad their profits<\/b><\/span>.<\/span>

<\/span> It is normal for a hospice to release a small portion of patients before death \u2014 about 15 percent has been typical, often because a patient\u2019s health unexpectedly improves.<\/span>

<\/span> But researchers found that at some hospices, and particularly at new, for-profit companies, the rate of patients leaving hospice care alive is double that level or more.<\/span>

<\/span> The number of \u201chospice survivors\u201d was especially high in two states: in Mississippi, where 41 percent of hospice patients were discharged alive, and Alabama, where 35 percent were.<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cWhen you have a live discharge rate that is as high as 30 percent, you have to wonder whether a hospice program is living up to the vision and morality of the founders of hospice,\u201d said Joan Teno, a Brown University hospice doctor and researcher and the lead author of the article published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine. \u201cOne part of the reason is some of the new hospice providers may not have the same values \u2014 they may be more concerned with profit margins than compassionate care<\/b><\/span>.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n

When people call for “Market Based Solutions,” this is what you get.<\/p>\n

Grifting from the Rick Scotts*<\/sup> of the world.<\/p>\n

*<\/sup>While head of Columbia\/HCA, the current governor of governor’s company engaged in activities leading to their having to pay nearly a billion dollars to the government for Medicare fraud<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out as more and more for-profit hospices are entering the market, more and more of hospice patients are leaving those hospices under their own power, largely because the for-profit hospices are taking non-terminal patients, and driving out expensive terminal ones, in order to maximize their bottom line: At hundreds of U.S. hospices, more …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1005,970,1046],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-corruption","category-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}