Paul Levy, who complained loudly about Partners Healthcare when he was CEO of Beth Israel, marvels at what he says is the spin on its recently announced contracts with Tufts and Blue Cross, that what the hospital holding company says is a willingness to rein in costs only perpetuates a system in which consumers and employers pay more than they should.
Plenty of background on the hospital's pioneering double hand transplant.
Via CommonHealth.
The Globe has a long piece on what Dr. Bohdan Pomahac had to go through to get his hospital and a New England organ-transplant board to let him do Boston's first face transplant.
Last week, Paul Levy, CEO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, cited some work by the staff at Brigham and Women's Hospital to reduce the number of falls patients take in the hospital. Today, he notes his own staff have taken a different approach to the problem. And then he looks at a map of where the two hospitals are and wonders:
That was a real fight, Boston Police report.
Police say Oscar Torres, 31, entered the emergency room around noon and began punching hospital workers and other people. Police say he was taken down by an off-duty officer visiting somebody at the hospital, who noticed people yelling and screaming in and near the ER:
The Boston Redevelopment Authority today approved a 10-year construction project that will reshape the gateway to the Longwood Medical Area at the Riverway and Brookline Avenue.
The project, which also needs zoning changes and approval from parks officials, would replace a series of existing buildings with a new 16-story residential building, a 12-story medical research and clinical building and and a facility to provide transitional housing for mental-health patients who no longer need hospitalization.
UPDATE: See comments below - an employee was found dead of an apparent drug overdose.
Boston Police tweet the homicide unit is on scene at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Brigham and Women's Hospital reports a surgical team yesterday performed the nation's second face transplant, on a man who suffered serious injuries in a fall:
The team of seven plastic surgeons and one ear, nose and throat surgeon, nurses, anesthesiologists and residents worked for 17 hours in replacing the mid-face area of the patient including the nose, hard palate, upper lip, facial skin, muscles of facial animation and the nerves that power them and provide sensation.
Dr. Sagun Tuli's complaint against Brigham and Women's and Dr. Arthur Day.
It's a pleasant sound when you're starting a fire, but not so good when you slip on some ice and break two bones in your leg. Mike Ball reports the only thing worse was the sound of the orthopedic surgeon and an aide snapping the bones back into place - at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Ball, who lives in Jamaica Plain, also explains why, when the ambulance came, he refused to go to the closer Faulkner Hospital - not that he needed to worry:
Immediately, the EMT shot back, "I wouldn't take my dog or cat to the Faulkner."
Paul Levy, CEO at Partners HealthCare frenemy Beth Israel Deaconess, reports he dismissed complaints from friends at Norwood Hospital about the MGH/Brigham clinic under construction in Foxboro - until this past Friday, when he gave a speech at a meeting at neighboring Gillette Stadium and was stunned to see how huge the thing is:
... [T]he two facilities are merely 8.5 miles apart, making them indistinguishable to many patients in terms of transportation access. Since insurance companies pay community doctors in the Partners system substantially more than those in the Caritas Christi system, it will be easier to recruit physicians to offer services in Foxboro than in Norwood. Does this difference in reimbursement rates reflect a documented difference in the quality of care between the community-based doctors in the two systems? No.
Now, let's acknowledge that MGH and the Brigham are powerful brands. To the extent patients are influenced by that reputation or other factors to migrate to the PHS facility from Norwood Hospital, the overall health care bill for the state will rise for no documented additional value to those patients or society. ...
Paul Levy at Beth Israel Deaconess discusses the full-page ad Brigham and Women's and Mass. General took out in the Globe today to tell us how wonderful they are (no doubt out of a sense of bursting pride, not because of a Globe Spotlight article on how they are using their muscle to boost their reimbursement rates).
The Globe reports part of the reason is doctors and we insist on care at MGH, Brigham and Women's and Children's, not just for fancy-shmancy cases but for everything - and they are so big now they can get away with charging dramatically higher rates than community hospitals and even other teaching hospitals in the region:
... [T]he high-end procedures that make the Brigham and Mass. General so famous are not their bread and butter. Eighty-five percent of the time their doctors are performing the same less glamorous medicine that occupies most other hospitals: delivering babies, repairing hernias, treating pneumonia. ...
A Suffolk County grand jury yesterday indicted a computer consultant on charges he bribed two employees at Partners Healthcare over four years to win "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in contracts with the healthcare giant, the state Attorney General's office announced. The two employees were also indicted.
Partners is the holding company that runs Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's hospitals and Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
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