MarkR

Hospitals to Underinsured: Pay Upfront

WSW, it is indeed illegal to turn away admitted patients in the event of providing life-saving care or in a life-threatening situation. Meaning, if there was a patient that had half of a chemo bag emptied (as per the example in the WSJ story), the hospital could not hold the person without care until they pay. That would not only be unethical, but also flagrantly illegal. Sighting caselaw is not something that is necessary, because if you are at all familiar with the healthcare industry, you know this is true. Further, this goes against everything that doctors and nurses (and other providers) are taught. Now, do some potential patients get turned to other facilities because they cannot pay for a certain facility up front? Yes, but it is completely within a hospital's right to do so, because 1) they know the patient will receive the needed care (even if it isn't from their facility) and 2) they are a business that must answer to either shareholders or a community and if they do not maintain profitable margins, they will go out of business, which will cause a much greater problem to our healthcare delivery system. There are so many hospitals, especially ones in rural settings, that are in this situation ... they can't get gov't funding, yet they also cannot get their patients to pay for their very costly services. This is the biggest problem in our healthcare system, which only leads to further problems, i.e., uninsured, frivolous lawsuits, etc.

In terms of million $ pay packages - that is not my concern, but I can tell you as someone that works for a firm who develops compensation plans for hospital and medical group executives, there isn't a hospital CEO - for profit or non-profit - out there that receives a million $ comp plan for only serving as a hospital CEO or Med Dir. You're off target there and you, like the author, do not understand that of which you speak.

Finally, your first point is the one that is most interesting, because I actually pointed this out on a response I wrote on my own website, reiboldt.com. The WSJ articles cites a situation at UCLA Med Ctr whereby a family was claiming mistreatment of sort by the hospital that allegedly led to the tragic death of a young lady. While this is a horrible situation, the family's attorney is lambasting the hospital; however, the family refused to give the hospital consent to respond to the claims, which without such consent, the hospital would violate HIPAA rules and other privacy regulations. So, the hospital is being claimed for doing something and they can't even respond or defend themselves, so it's open season on frivolous blame by the trial attorney representing the family, which (the story left this part out) received a multi-million dollar settlement out of the situation. Now, whether there was wrongdoing or not, we'll never know, because it was a one-sided blame game by a trial lawyer representing a grieving family. So, ultimately, the WSJ can't be sued for libel because it's giving one side to stories that no one can stipulate or refute, due to privacy restrictions. Tell me something isn't wrong there.