Compensation in the most common physician specialties has been growing much faster than inflation for the past five years. Now, financially squeezed hospitals are set to reverse that trend.
The idea behind the program, which starts in September, is that doctors can no longer leave the business aspect of their jobs to the finance guys while maintaining their integrity as healers.
The Indian-born doctor is seeking past and future pay, in addition to other damages, for enduring what she considers harassment and discrimination while a resident at the Indianapolis hospital.
As St. Vincent Health has nearly doubled the number of physicians it employs over the past two years, the losses on those practices have mounted. And the same thing is happening at all the major Indianapolis hospital systems, as all have spent the past four years aggressively acquiring physician practices.
Over the last three years, all major hospitals in Indianapolis have been active in hiring physicians. Competition was especially intense for cardiologists.
Indiana University, which has received nearly $600 million from the endowment over the last three decades, will leverage the
new gift to increase its
scientific discoveries and commercialize life science innovations.
Now that Medicare is calling for all doctors it deals with to use electronic medical records by 2015, the trend of physicians’
merging with hospitals or larger groups could hasten.
Now that Medicare is calling for all doctors it deals with to use electronic medical records by 2015, it could hasten the trend of physicians merging with hospitals or larger groups. But it could also speed up the retirement of aging physicians at a time when they are in short supply. That’s according to John-David […]
An acute physician shortage in Indiana is driving a request for an additional $5 million in annual funding to expand enrollment at the state’s only medical school. The Indiana University School of Medicine’s Physician Workforce Task Force conducted a study in 2006 that found the state already had 3,500 fewer physicians than it should. Indiana had 12,534 doctors in 2005-a number that remains relatively flat because the medical school churns out the same number of graduates each year. Over the…
Everybody’s doing it. So Heaton and Eadie and Katz, Sapper & Miller decided to get together, too. Katz Sapper announced last week that it will acquire Heaton and Eadie because both Indianapolis-based accounting firms expect their main health care clients-physicians-to link up more and more with one another and with hospitals in the next five years. They want the heft and experience to win the right to handle finance and consulting on more of those transactions. Katz Sapper gets Heaton…
Indiana’s physician assistants received a collective shot in the arm earlier this month when their authority to prescribe medicine to patients became effective. The profession had long lobbied lawmakers for the right before the Legislature relented with the passage of House Bill 1241 this year. July 1 officially marked the milestone in which Indiana became the last state in the nation to grant prescribing powers to physician assistants. “It’s the right thing to do,” said Dr. John Lucich, director of…
Indiana could see a wave of new physician assistants working here if lawmakers allow the medical technicians to prescribe medicine. So say the proponents of House Bill 1241, now being debated in the Indiana Senate. They claim Indiana, as the only state yet to grant the prescribing prerogative, forces doctors to hire fewer physician assistants and so loses health care workers to other states. That’s a particularly important issue in rural and some urban areas, where doctors are scarce. Because…
Central Indiana stands on the leading edge of a national push by health care insurance systems to link doctors’ pay with their performance. The Indiana Health Information Exchange-a not-for-profit collaboration among some of the state’s largest health care providers-is developing a program that uses data collected from insurers and care providers to produce quality reports. Those reports then will be sent to doctors and used by the insurers to develop incentive programs for reimbursement. The goal: Start a system by…
ome heart muscle had already died by the time family members coaxed the 50-something uninsured man into visiting Bloomington Hospital a few weeks ago. The patient had suffered severe chest pains two days before his hospital visit but didn’t seek treatment, said Dr. Rob Stone, an emergencyroom physician there. “It was clearly because he was afraid of the bill,” Stone said. By the time he made it to the hospital, the man was suffering a second heart attack. Now he…
Major Hospital went on a buying spree toward the end of last year, and it had nothing to do with the holiday season. The Shelbyville hospital purchased three physician practices as part of an effort to help doctors and to make Major a “physician-friendly hospital,” Major Hospital CEO Tony Lennen said. “I’ve always felt if our physicians do well, we’ll do well,” he said. “Our goal down here is, ‘Is there some symbiotic way we can coexist?’ “We’ve always been…
Indiana’s largest group of cardiologists was almost ready a few years ago to build its own specialty hospital in partnership with an out-of-town chain. The Care Group LLC had entered deep discussions with North Carolina-based MedCath Corp. to create a potent duo in a profitable field. The doctors told St. Vincent Health, which depended on them for cardiology expertise, “at the 11th hour” of their plans, said Dr. Skip Hallam, a cardiologist and Care Group CEO. “They stepped up to…
Without health care and related jobs, the United States would have nearly 400,000 fewer jobs than it did a year ago, according to Labor Department figures through January.
