Giving doctors cash rewards to reduce hospital spending helps control costs without compromising quality or patients’ access to care, according to a five-year study that included more than 220,000 patients. The study compared six cardiac catheterization labs that implemented this type of “gainsharing” program to 123 non-gainsharing labs. The researchers, from Arizona State University, found that gainsharing reduced hospital costs by 7.4 percent, or $315 per patient. That means that nationwide use of gainsharing could slash hospital costs for coronary stent patients by about $195 million a year, according to the researchers. Most of the savings from the gainsharing programs in the study were the result of lower prices for coronary stents. The gainsharing programs didn’t lead to any changes in patient referral patterns and didn’t increase the overall risk of in-lab complications. In fact, the gainsharing programs were associated with significant decreases in three specific types of complications, the researchers said. “We found no evidence that gainsharing prompted physicians to avoid patients with existing health problems or pick the healthiest patients,” study author Jonathon Ketcham, an assistant professor at the university’s School of Health Management and Policy, said in prepared statement. Further research into gainsharing’s effects on other health care quality measures and how it influences doctors’ decisions would be valuable, he added.
Please click on the link below to read the Statesman.com article:
http://www.statesman.com/health/content/shared-auto/healthnews/cost/615404.html
For more information on defending medical malpractice and nursing home matters in Florida contact Howard Citron at The Citron Law Firm, P.A. – www.citronlegal.com.
October 24, 2008 at 11:36 pm |
OIG Approves Gainsharing Program for Ortho and Spine
AUGUST 14, 2008
The OIG has approved the first orthopedic and spine gainsharing project.
No details have been released on the participating hospitals or the particular procedures and technologies that will be covered in the project. Additionally, no financial terms have been publicized, though the Goodroe press release says that most arrangements allow participating physicians to be paid as much as 50% of the savings generated under the program. According to Goodroe, up to $75 million in potential savings has been identified in the existing programs, so these benefits could be significant. A 2006 survey found that most physicians felt that gainsharing was an effective way to align financial incentives for hospitals and physicians, though they were divided on what constitutes gainsharing and whether it should be disclosed to patients.
In her guest blog for HealthpointCapital, Goodroe Healthcare Solutions founder Joane Goodroe commented, “Gainsharing is first about assuring quality of care for patients and secondly about increasing efficiency.” Industry groups such as MDMA and AdvaMed have taken issue with these objectives, suggesting that gainsharing may reduce the quality of patient care, slow development of new technology and discriminate against smaller manufacturers.
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I’ve present Gainsharing to MGMA Annual, BONES, MGMA FMS and MSO Societies.
The docs have to approach the hospital – the hospital is not going to be very aggressive about sharing their savings.
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Marshall Maglothin MHA MBA
President, Blue Oak Consulting, LLC
COO, Inpatient Specialists, P.A.
Fairfax, VA / Rockville, MD
mmaglothin@cox.net