Highlights of the important and the interesting from the world of healthcare:
Health reform law more popular than ever … but still not that popular: A new Associated Press poll finds that the health reform law is more popular than ever, with 45 percent of respondents in favor of it, up from 39 percent last month. The latest number is the highest show of support for the law/bill since the AP began asking about it in September. Still, 42 percent don’t support it, so the spread between those who approve and those who disapprove of the law is very small. While we shouldn’t overreact to just one poll, the numbers suggest the public may be willing to give the law a chance.
The eternal optimists: Venture capitalists are an ever-optimistic bunch, and they probably have to be to put money behind what might initially seem like strange ideas that become indispensable tools (think Twitter). So it’s not exactly a shocker that the market for venture-backed IPOs, while improved from last year, hasn’t exactly taken off in 2010 the way many VCs predicted. “The market right now is incredibly murky,” said one VC at a New York venture summit. “The appetite for people to buy what we have to sell is very low.”
Inside an Automated Healthcare Practice: Redesigning Care Around People, Not Paperwork
By reducing administrative burden and redesigning workflows around human needs, it creates space for what matters most: connection between clinicians and patients.
California nurses strike update: The next drama in the possible California nurses strike will play out in a courtroom. A San Francisco judge will hold a hearing to consider another judge’s ruling that prevented the nurses from staging a one-day strike. The nurses have accused management of failing to uphold California’s nurse-to-patient staffing ratio law while nurses are on break or on meal times, and of not adjusting those ratios properly for acutely ill patients
Heads, Medtronic wins: Arkansas officials have seized a box of human heads that was headed to a Medtronic research facility in Texas. Paperwork problems with the head shipment raised red flags to authorities, but, aside from creating some strange headlines, it seems like this genuinely is a “nothing-to-see-here-folks” type of situation.
Lilly’s severance offers: The Indianapolis Star got ahold of an internal Eli Lilly memo detailing severance packages for laid-off employees. (The drugmaker said last year it was planning to cut about 5,500 jobs.) Workers with less than 10 years with the company get three times their monthly salaries, while those who’ve put in more than 25 years get 18 times their monthly wages.
More uninsured Americans: The ranks of America’s uninsured grew about 6 percent last year to 46.3 million, according to federal statistics. And the number would’ve been much worse had it not been for public aid programs. About 60 million people went without insurance at some point in 2009.
The Healthcare Payments Industry Has a Perception Problem
Healthcare payments are no longer about transactions. It’s about controlling the revenue cycle. And increasingly, that control is not sitting with ISOs.
Photo from flickr user apdk