Hospitals Who Don't Control Infections Are Hit With Funding Cuts

Detroit, Flint-Area Hospitals

 Among Those Penalized

 for Acquired Infections

In all, 27 Michigan hospitals were among 769 nationwide whose

 Medicare and Medicaid funding was cut; 60 percent in Detroit and Flint areas.

By Beth Dalbey (Patch Staff) - December 22, 2016 5:52 pm ET 

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DETROIT, MI — Medicare and Medicaid payments have been cut at
27 Michigan hospitals where patients became sicker due to infections
 and other conditions acquired while hospitalized, according to a
 report released Wednesday by Kaiser Health News. Of the Michigan
 hospitals, 60 percent are in the Detroit and Flint areas, and Beaumont
 Hospitals, the largest health system in the state, has five of the
 eight Metro Detroit hospitals on the list.

Nationwide, 769 hospitals received cuts from the Centers of Medicare
 and Medicaid Services. The Metro Detroit/Flint area hospitals include:
 Beaumont Hospital – Farmington Hills; Beaumont Hospital – Taylor;
 Beaumont Hospital – Wayne; Beaumont Hospital – Grosse Pointe;
Beaumont-Hospital – Royal Oak; Detroit Receiving Hospital and
University Health Center, Detroit; Gensys Regional Medical Center –
Health Park, Grand Blanc; Harper University Hospital, Detroit; Henry
Ford Wyandotte Hospital; Hurley Medical Center, Flint; Karmanos
 Cancer Center, Detroit; McLaren Flint; Providence-Providence Park
Hospital, Southfield; St. Joseph Mercy – Pontiac; and Sinai Grace
 Hospital, Detroit.

Others on the list include Bronson Battle Creek Hospital; Edward w.
 Sparrow Hospital in Lansing; Garden City Hospital; Memorial
Healthcare, Owosso; Mid-Michigan Center – Clare; Munson Medical
 Center, Traverse City; St. Mary’s Health Care, Grand Rapids; Spectrum
Healthcare – Butterworth Campus, Grand Rapids; St. Joseph Mercy,
Ann Arbor; University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor; and
UP Health System Portage, Hancock.

The goal of the program is to hold hospitals accountable for hospital
acquired infections and to shift hospitals into a thought process of
 giving higher quality and care performance, rather than higher
 volume of services. For the first time, the evaluation also included
counting the spread of antibiotic-resistant germs in assessing penalties.

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Penalized hospitals will lose 1 percent of Medicare payments for a year.
Estimated losses among larger hospitals will exceed $1 million dollars
. Reductions also apply to hospitals servicing low-income areas.
Nationally, hospital acquired infection rates declined 21 percent
 between 2010 and 2015, according to the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality.

“Medicare is having a dramatic impact on decreasing medical errors,”
Bret Jackson, president of the Economic Alliance of Michigan, said in
 a news release. “However there is more work to be done. Thousands
 of Michigan residents each year are the victims of medical errors and
 we must address it.”

In November 2016, EAM released a study demonstrating how CMS
 hospital star ratings skew lower for hospitals servicing Michigan’s
poor and that socioeconomic factors may be a factor. The study can
 be found here: Socioeconomic Factors Impact on Hospital Quality.

For additional information on Kaiser Health News report go to Latest
 Hospital Injury Penalties Include Crackdown On Antibiotic Resistant
 Germs.

Photo via Shutterstock

When Nearly Half A Million People Die In Hospitals Nationwide, What Is All The Hubbub About Guns?

Is Your Hospital Among State's Safest, Most Dangerous?

More than 440,000 people die annually from hospital errors, injuries, accidents and infections, according to new study.

Originally posted on the Royal Oak, MI Patch

By BETH DALBEY (Patch Staff) November 1, 2015 

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How safe is your hospital?

The Fall 2015 Hospital Safety Score rankings used 28 measures to determine a grade for hospitals that represents its overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.

As many as 440,000 people a year die each year from hospital errors, injuries, accidents and infections, according to The Leapfrog Group, which pulled data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the American Hospital Association’s Annual Survey and Health Information Technology Supplement.

Additionally, the group said, one in every 25 patients develops an infection while hospitalized; a Medicare patient has a one in four chance of experiencing injury, harm or death; and iIn a typical day, more than 1,000 people die because of a preventable hospital error.

Hospitals in Michigan are, collectively, the 21st safest in the country. Eighty hospitals were ranked, and 19 — or 23.8 percent of them — received A ratings, The A-rated hospitals were among 773 nationwide.

Eight Metro Detroit hospitals got the top based on national performance measures from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, 12 scored a B, eight got a C and one got an F.

Below are ranked hospitals in the Detroit Metro area. Click on the link to find out more about where they did well and where they faltered.

A Grade

• Beaumont Hospital – Troy
• Providence Park Hospital, Novi
• St. John River Hospital, Detroit
• St. John Hospital & Medical Center, Detroit
• Detroit Receiving Hospital and University Health Center
• Providence Hospital, Southfield
• St. Mary Mercy Hospital, Livonia
• Huron Valley – Sinai Hospital,Commerce Township

B Grade

• Beaumont Hospital – Grosse Pointe
• Beaumont Hospital – Royal Oak
• Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital
• Henry Ford Macomb Hospitals, Clinton Township
• St. Joseph Mercy – Chelsea
• McLaren – Oakland, Pontiac
• Oakwood Annapolis Hospital, Wayne
• Sinai Grace Hospital, Detroit
• St. John Macomb Hospital, Warren
• St. John Oakland Hospital, Madison Heights
• St. Joseph Mercy Oakland, Pontiac
• McLaren Flint

C Grade

• Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital
• Oakwood Southshore Medical Center, Trenton
• Botsford Hospital, Farmington Hills
• Oakwood Hospital & Medical Center – Dearborn
• Harper-Hutzel Hospital, Detroit
• Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit
• McLaren Macomb, Mount Clemens
• St. Joseph Mercy Livingston Hospital, Howell

F Grade

• Hurley Medical Center, Flint

Government Has Been Unable To Pump Up The Economy, Create Jobs Or Anything. Sad Lesson!

America's Economic Woes: Why Jobs Are Scarce, Wages Low and Government Can't Help

Thursday, 10 Jul 2014 09:30 AM

By Peter Morici Twitter @pmorici1

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Americans keep hoping for a robust recovery — one that delivers better-paying jobs and decent returns on retirement savings. Changes in technology and the economy may require that never happens, and government efforts to improve conditions often multiply the misery.

In 1908, Henry Ford had a great idea — the Model T — and a novel understanding of mass production, but needed huge amounts of capital to build factories, establish dealers to sell and service mass-produced cars and maintain a large corps of managers and assembly workers.

His success inspired competitors and whole new industries making everything from agricultural implements to zippers. For three generations, those created enormous demand for capital and jobs for millions in manufacturing and supporting services.



In the closing decades of the 20th century, rapidly advancing digital technologies helped those industries use factories more efficiently and slash the numbers of managers and assembly workers needed.

Most digital companies never had quite the same appetite for capital and workers.
Google was founded in 1998 with $100,000 in seed capital, and $25 million in funding a year later. Within five years, its search engine was available to virtually every computer user around the world, and its brand was more ubiquitous than Coca Cola.

Google's outstanding stock is worth approximately $370 billion — more than five times Ford's stock — and it has accomplished this remarkable wealth creation on a relatively small initial investment. Today it has approximately 50,000 high-skilled employees — less than one-fourth of Ford's workforce, which has been significantly downsized in recent decades.

Older enterprises like Ford and younger ones like Google that form the manufacturing and technology economy of the 21st century need more tech-savvy workers than universities and community colleges provide. However, even if enough liberal arts and business programs could retool to produce all the science, math, technology and engineering graduates needed, the remaining programs would still produce many more non-science, technology, mathematics and engineering graduates than the economy could absorb.

Similarly innovators often don't need a lot of money to create valuable new enterprises or expand established businesses. Consider that many young people create profitable apps and marketing platforms on their laptops, and major corporations are flush with billions in cash and too few opportunities to deploy it.

Consequently, established companies and individual investors bid up prices for young enterprises, whose owners wish to cash in on their initial success, and pay astronomical sums for the initial public offerings of companies like Facebook. They bid up prices for stocks, bonds and collectables, and drive down yields on dividend-paying stocks and interest rates on bonds and CDs.

To generate enough jobs, the economy must create lots of service businesses beyond the ecosystems of manufacturing and technology — everything from restaurants to retirement homes — but government regulations dictating wages, sick leave and health benefits drive many services offshore. That's why credit card call centers and even some back office legal services are in Asia.

Those centers throw millions of less-skilled Americans out of work, slow economic growth and further reduce college graduates' wages and returns on savings and investments.

Too many subsidized loans to send 60 percent of high school graduates to college merely drives up tuition and worsens the glut of graduates and leaves young people saddled with debt.

Since 2008, the Federal Reserve has pumped more than $3 trillion dollars into the economy with too few good results. It's not responding to a shortage of capital, but it is further driving up asset prices and pushing down the returns on saving and investing.

What most Americans won't accept, and politicians lack courage to admit, is the government can't broadly raise wages or spur growth by regulating prices, mandating healthcare benefits, oversubsidizing education and printing money, but it can make most folks a lot worse off by trying.

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