Tag: JAMA Internal Medicine

Hospital CEOs

Professionals at medical centers that have a lot of high-tech devices and great individual fulfillment are paid more than their colleagues, a research of CEO settlement at charitable medical centers finds. Running a hospital that scores well on keeping more sufferers alive or providing comprehensive charitable organization care doesn’t convert into a pay increase. “The finding on quality is frustrating,” says Dr. Ashish Jha, a lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health and one of the study’s writers. “It says that most boards are more targeted on the coolest technological innovation around. This paper indicates that maybe we need to pay a little more attention to other more important results, such as whether your sufferers are dying at a higher rate or not.”

CEOs of technology-happy charitable medical centers gained $136,000 more, on average, than those with little innovative equipment, according to the research released in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. CEOs at places with great individual fulfillment ratings gained $52,000 more, on average, than those with poor reviews. The research discovered no difference in CEO settlement based on openly available actions of quality, such as death rate, re-admissions prices and how continually medical centers followed a number of openly revealed recommendations for recommended care. The results are in line with a report last year that targeted on New Hampshire medical centers and also discovered no relationship between CEO pay and high quality of care.

Nonprofit medical centers have been under analysis for spending high incomes to CEOs while skimping on benefits for their communities. Dr. Nancy Joynt, the study’s lead writer, says that since charitable medical centers don’t have to pay any property taxation, the scientists wanted to see if there was any proof hospital boards provided dollars to CEOs to provide more charitable organization care, such as dealing with lots of low-income sufferers and discounting or waiving bills for those who had trouble spending. “We didn’t see a sign at all,” she says. The research is the first to use federal tax profits of medical centers to evaluate CEO pay and the aspects that are associated with it. The scientists analyzed records for 2,581 medical centers, more than 98 percent of private charitable medical centers. For-profit medical centers, which are a minority of America’s acute care medical centers, weren’t included in the research. The research recognized 1,877 executives, with some who ran more than one hospital.

Hospital Infections and Their Cost

Infections obtained in the hospital cost the U.S. medical care system $10 billion dollars a year, new results display. Past analysis have placed the yearly price of dealing with those infections at $20 billion dollars to $40 billion dollars, so the new figures show improvement is being made, Dr. Eyal Zimlichman of The Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, one of the new study’s writers, informed Reuters Health. Nevertheless, he said, much more can be done.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC, about one in every 20 put in the hospital contract a hospital-acquired disease. Zimlichman and his group analyzed 26 studies to recognize the expenses associated with dealing with the five most typical, expensive and avoidable infections among hospitalized patients. Bloodstream infections from central lines, which are long pipes placed in a large vein such as in the stomach area or arm to provide drugs, liquids, nutrients or blood products, were the most expensive, at a price of $45,814 per case. Ventilator-associated pneumonia, or a bronchi ailment that produces while a person is on a respirator, came in second, at $40,144 per case.

Post-surgery infections happening at the site of the operation cost $20,785 per patient. Infection with Clostridium difficile, a tough-to-treat bacteria that causes serious diarrhea and can spread within hospital units, cost $11,285 per case. UTIs were the least expensive, at $896 per case. About 441,000 of these infections happen among hospitalized adults in the U.S. every year, for a sum total of $9.8 billion dollars, Zimlichman and his co-workers revealed in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Post surgery infections and ventilator-associated pneumonia each included about one third of the total expenses. That was followed by central line bloodstream infections (about 19 percent), C. difficile infections (15 percent) and UTIs, which included less than 1 % of all expenses. Up to 70 % of central line infections and ventilator-associated pneumonias can be avoided if the medical care group dealing with the individual follows a guideline of best practices included Pronovost, who did not take part in the new analysis. Patients can secure themselves by asking a hospital about their infection rates and what they are doing to decrease them, he said.