Hospital employees recognize and report only one out of seven errors, accidents and other events that harm Medicare patients while they are hospitalized, federal investigators say in a new report.

Yet even after hospitals investigate preventable injuries and infections that have been reported, they rarely change their practices to prevent repetition of the “adverse events,” according to the study, from Daniel R. Levinson, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services.

In the report, being issued on Friday, Mr. Levinson notes that as a condition of being paid under Medicare, hospitals are to “track medical errors and adverse patient events, analyze their causes” and improve care.

Nearly all hospitals have some type of system for employees to inform hospital managers of adverse events, defined as significant harm experienced by patients as a result of medical care.

“Despite the existence of incident reporting systems,” Mr. Levinson said, “hospital staff did not report most events that harmed Medicare beneficiaries.” Indeed, he said, some of the most serious problems, including some that caused patients to die, were not reported.

Hospital employees recognize and report only one out of seven errors, accidents and other events that harm Medicare patients while they are hospitalized, federal investigators say in a new report.

Yet even after hospitals investigate preventable injuries and infections that have been reported, they rarely change their practices to prevent repetition of the “adverse events,” according to the study, from Daniel R. Levinson, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services.

In the report, being issued on Friday, Mr. Levinson notes that as a condition of being paid under Medicare, hospitals are to “track medical errors and adverse patient events, analyze their causes” and improve care.

Nearly all hospitals have some type of system for employees to inform hospital managers of adverse events, defined as significant harm experienced by patients as a result of medical care.

“Despite the existence of incident reporting systems,” Mr. Levinson said, “hospital staff did not report most events that harmed Medicare beneficiaries.” Indeed, he said, some of the most serious problems, including some that caused patients to die, were not reported.

Read more at the NYT.

Among the must-do issues on Congress’ end of year list is the “doc fix” – billions of dollars needed to avert drastic rate cuts for physicians who treat Medicare’s 48 million beneficiaries.

For doctors, the nail-biter has become a familiar but frustrating rite. Lawmakers invariably defer the cuts prescribed by a 1997 reimbursement formula, which everyone agrees is broken beyond repair. But the deferrals are temporary, and the doc fix has become increasingly difficult to push through a divided and deficit-wary Congress. Last year, Congress delayed scheduled cuts five times, with the longest patch lasting one year.

The script is no different heading into 2012. Should lawmakers fail to reach agreement before returning home for the holidays, a half million doctors will face a 27 percent cut beginning Jan. 1. Although Democratic and Republican leaders have pledged to stop that from happening, they disagree over how to offset the costs of a fix. While there is little doubt some agreement will be reached, a deal could be delayed until early 2012.

Read more on the “doc fix” dilemma on Kaiser Health News here.

WASHINGTON — A Democratic senator, Ron Wyden of Oregon, and a Republican member of the House, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, unveiled a bipartisan plan on Wednesday to revamp Medicare and make a fixed federal contribution to the cost of coverage for each beneficiary. The lawmakers aim to reshape the debate over the giant health insurance program by addressing concerns that have provoked fierce opposition to similar ideas in the past. Just as important as the details of their proposal was the fact that the two were working together on an issue that both parties have exploited for political advantage.

The proposal would make major structural changes in Medicare and limit the government’s open-ended financial commitment to the program. Under the proposal, known as premium support, Medicare would subsidize premiums charged by private insurers that care for beneficiaries under contract with the government.

Congress would establish an insurance exchange for Medicare beneficiaries. Private plans would compete with the traditional Medicare program and would have to provide benefits of the same or greater value. The federal contribution in each region would be based on the cost of the second-cheapest option, whether that was a private plan or traditional Medicare.

Read more on the Wyden-Ryan Medicare proposal from the New York Times here.

Repeat customers in hospitals are seen as a big problem – not to the hospitals themselves, which can profit from some patients’ frequent visits, but to the entities that pay for the care: Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, especially, is taking hospitals’ repeat customers very seriously. Almost one out of five Medicare patients discharged from a hospital is back within 30 days. Research suggests as many as 75 percent of those return visits could be prevented with better treatment in the hospital and better care once people are back home.

As with many other problems in the health-care system, unnecessary hospital readmissions are associated with worse treatment and health outcomes, as well as higher costs to taxpayers – $15 billion a year for Medicare alone, according to a Medicare Payment Advisory Commission study.

Starting next fall, HHS will begin penalizing hospitals if their readmission rates are higher than expected for three conditions: heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia. In the first year that penalties kick in, one percent of hospitals’ Medicare payments will be withheld, and that penalty will climb in subsequent years – at a time when payers are reducing fees to hospitals on a number of other fronts, too.

Read more on hospital readmission control from Kaiser Health News here.

In an abrupt policy change, the Department of Health and Human Services will make its huge Medicare claims database more broadly available to the public, to help consumers and employers make better-informed decisions about medical care.

In particular, the federal agency will relax its restrictions on the release of information about individual doctors who participate in Medicare, the $524 billion federal program for the elderly and disabled, reversing a three-decade position that doing so would violate physicians’ privacy rights.

The new rules implement a little-noticed provision of the health-care overhaul Congress passed last year.

Dow Jones & Co., The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, filed a lawsuit earlier this year seeking to overturn a 1979 federal-court injunction barring the release of Medicare physician information.

Medicare’s massive claims database is a computerized record of the bills it pays for the medical care of its 48 million beneficiaries. It is widely considered the single best source of information on the U.S. health-care system.

Find out more from the WSJ.

More than 2.65 million Medicare recipients have saved more than $1.5 billion on their prescriptions this year, a $569-per-person average, while premiums have remained stable, the government plans to announce today.

That’s because of the provision of the health care law that put a 50% discount on prescription drugs in the “doughnut hole,” the gap between traditional and catastrophic coverage in the drug benefit, also known as Part D.

And, as of the end of November, more than 24 million people, or about half of those with traditional Medicare, have gone in for a free annual physical or other screening exam since the rules changed this year because of the health care law.

Get more details at USA Today.

Medicare, which covers some 42 million American seniors, will pay for obesity screening and behavioral therapy as part of its portfolio of preventive services.

About 72 million American adults, including about a third of Medicare recipients, are obese, and the related health-care costs total some $325 billion a year. The federal decision will now allow Medicare beneficiaries to see their doctors for regular weight-loss counseling — a low-cost, low-tech solution — and may spur private insurers to do the same.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ decision summary, obese Medicare beneficiaries — with a body mass index of 30 or higher — seeking weight-loss counseling may see their primary care physician for one face-to-face visit every week for the first month. Then, Medicare will pay for one face-to-face visit every other week for the next five months. If the patient loses at least 3 kg (6.6 lbs.) over the first six months, Medicare will pay for an additional six months of once-a-month face-to-face visits with the doctor.

Continue reading more about this coverage at TIME

WASHINGTON — Politicians of both parties outdo each other vying for the approval of seniors, but their inability to compromise on the federal budget has put Medicare in the crosshairs again.

Unless Congress acts before Jan. 1, doctors face a 27 percent cut in their fees for treating Medicare patients. That could undermine health care for millions of elderly and disabled beneficiaries.

Last year around the holidays doctors were looking at a cut of about 20 percent. It’s become a recurring symbol of the government’s budget dysfunction.

The cuts are the consequence of a 1990s budget law that failed to control spending but never got repealed. Congress passes a temporary fix each time, only to grow the size of reductions required next time around. The supercommittee’s breakdown leaves the so-called “doc fix” unresolved with time running out.

Continue reading the Associated Press here

Good news for seniors: The government says Medicare’s basic monthly premium will rise less than expected next year, by $3.50 for most.

It could be good, too, for President Obama and Democrats struggling for older Americans’ votes in a close election.

At $99.90 per month, the 2012 Part B premium for outpatient care will be about $7 less than projected as recently as May. The additional money that most seniors will pay works out to about 10 percent of the average Social Security cost-of-living increase they’ll also be due.

Some recently enrolled younger retirees will actually pay less. They were charged $115.40 a month this year, and they’ll see that go down to $99.90.

The main reason for lower-than-expected premiums seems to be the connection between Social Security COLAs and Medicare. Some also cite a moderation in health care costs.

But the Obama administration is hoping seniors will get a simpler takeaway message: Medicare is under sound management.

Read the rest of the article at the Tribune-Review.

“As the congressional super committee considers ways to cut Medicare spending, one issue that has been raised is to cut back on imaging services that some experts say are overused by physicians. But an industry study released Tuesday maintains that one tactic that has been suggested — the use of prior authorization for imaging services – doesn’t save money.

Visit kaiserhealthnews.org to find out more.

The report, financed by the Access to Medical Imaging Coalition, also suggests that it may cost more to run such programs than is often recovered. Prior authorization requires physicians and other practioners to get permission first before performing a service such as medical imaging.”