The most F'd up thing about our medical institution in the US, is that while "you must have insurance" is regulated - depending on the size of the Hospital Group - they all can (Could - may have changed since I last built a hospital) negotiate their individual rate with each insurance company based on the size/volume of patients.
This is wrong.
The coding for a given procedure should be standardized and priced as such.
This simple change could do great things for leveling the playing field for the nation of healthcare ;
If regardless of your volume of encounters on a particular code, the price should be set.
This may do several things:
Make rural hospitals/clinics more competitive with a major hospitals.
In my experience though - the big spending in non-medical areas that hospitals have are around "comfort aesthetics" (Art, pretty buildings etc)
Hospitals which cost $400MM -- to $1B facility (2009) spent a LOT on art. They seek donors constantly...
Maybe they should have the rich donors, as a requirement for their contribution, also require they provide a loaner art install.
This way - lets say you donate $1MM to a hospital, 100% of that donation should go to actual clinical build etc.. and the hospital should be precluded from your financial donation from being used to pay a digital arts company from being paid their ~250K fee through your donation...
I've built quite a few big facilities and art is a HUGE aspect in the health aesthetics of an environment ; but the cost is always exorbitant. Personally, having managed the install of such - I think that this should be outside of what the hospital should spend money on - unless the donation is specifically for art/aesthetics...
This is wrong.
The coding for a given procedure should be standardized and priced as such.
This simple change could do great things for leveling the playing field for the nation of healthcare ;
If regardless of your volume of encounters on a particular code, the price should be set.
This may do several things:
Make rural hospitals/clinics more competitive with a major hospitals.
In my experience though - the big spending in non-medical areas that hospitals have are around "comfort aesthetics" (Art, pretty buildings etc)
Hospitals which cost $400MM -- to $1B facility (2009) spent a LOT on art. They seek donors constantly...
Maybe they should have the rich donors, as a requirement for their contribution, also require they provide a loaner art install.
This way - lets say you donate $1MM to a hospital, 100% of that donation should go to actual clinical build etc.. and the hospital should be precluded from your financial donation from being used to pay a digital arts company from being paid their ~250K fee through your donation...
I've built quite a few big facilities and art is a HUGE aspect in the health aesthetics of an environment ; but the cost is always exorbitant. Personally, having managed the install of such - I think that this should be outside of what the hospital should spend money on - unless the donation is specifically for art/aesthetics...
This lightens the build cost for large hospitals.
Source designer/TPM/etc on:
- El Camino CA (I just got this today: https://i.imgur.com/KFCX4N0.jpg)
- UCSF CA
- NOME AK
- Sequoia CA
- Methodist CA
- Others I cant even recall now...
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All of these costs get baked into the overall cost of the facility - and guess who pays for that? (not only in monetary costs)
My brother was the head of the VA for AK - commander of 10th medical wing for the USAF and is currently the CMO for the largest hospital group in AK.
Familiar with both sides of the table on price-fixing...
I don't have pharma exp WRT drug costs... just sunk costs in the facilities I build - but I get info from my brother on certain things...
but pharma prices need to be heavily reg'd