Good Pace Past Times Ag Healey. Adjacent Steps?
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Brava to the novel Massachusetts Attorney General, Maura Healey, for indicating her displeasure alongside the Partners Healthcare System bargain submitted yesteryear her predecessor. I'm guessing that the Court is straight off really unlikely to appprove the proposed settlement. That's good.
What next? It would endure tempting to persuasion this inquiry of scheme expansion every bit exclusively a Partners issue. After all, they accept extensive marketplace position power. But the fact is that all of the major systems inward the dry soil are acting to expand their laissez passer on through mergers in addition to acquisitions.
It's fourth dimension to pose a destination to all such anti-competitive activities.
There is merely no argue that major academic medical centers remove to ain community hospitals in addition to physician groups to make the purposes of creating accountable attention organizations. Clinical relationships that direct near appropriately managed attention are non a affair of corporate structure. They require, instead:
1) Complete interoperability of electronic medical records amidst the diverse segments of the wellness attention spectrum of care; hence that no i "owns" a patient in addition to s/he is gratuitous to direct the best house to teach care;
2) Transparency of fiscal charges in addition to relationships betwixt in addition to amidst hospitals, doctors, in addition to other wellness attention facilities hence that patients in addition to referring doctors tin run into what the truthful costs of attention volition endure inward different settings;
3) Transparency of clinical outcomes hence that referring doctors (and patients) tin brand decisions near the correct venue for attention based on evidence, rather than anecdote in addition to conjecture.
Here's what the novel AG should do. She should found a "safe harbor" for mergers in addition to acquisitions only later the dry soil every bit a whole has pose these standards in addition to practices inward place. Until then--whether it is PHS, BIDMC, Lahey, Steward, or Tufts--no to a greater extent than acquisitions or mergers should endure permitted.
What next? It would endure tempting to persuasion this inquiry of scheme expansion every bit exclusively a Partners issue. After all, they accept extensive marketplace position power. But the fact is that all of the major systems inward the dry soil are acting to expand their laissez passer on through mergers in addition to acquisitions.
It's fourth dimension to pose a destination to all such anti-competitive activities.
There is merely no argue that major academic medical centers remove to ain community hospitals in addition to physician groups to make the purposes of creating accountable attention organizations. Clinical relationships that direct near appropriately managed attention are non a affair of corporate structure. They require, instead:
1) Complete interoperability of electronic medical records amidst the diverse segments of the wellness attention spectrum of care; hence that no i "owns" a patient in addition to s/he is gratuitous to direct the best house to teach care;
2) Transparency of fiscal charges in addition to relationships betwixt in addition to amidst hospitals, doctors, in addition to other wellness attention facilities hence that patients in addition to referring doctors tin run into what the truthful costs of attention volition endure inward different settings;
3) Transparency of clinical outcomes hence that referring doctors (and patients) tin brand decisions near the correct venue for attention based on evidence, rather than anecdote in addition to conjecture.
Here's what the novel AG should do. She should found a "safe harbor" for mergers in addition to acquisitions only later the dry soil every bit a whole has pose these standards in addition to practices inward place. Until then--whether it is PHS, BIDMC, Lahey, Steward, or Tufts--no to a greater extent than acquisitions or mergers should endure permitted.