A pretty dismal Future is being proposed - Health systems will be one-stop shops

The Pittsburgh Tribune Review has an interesting article about the future of medical care.

Health systems will be one-stop shops

By Richard GazarikTRIBUNE-REVIEWSunday, February 22, 2009

"In the next decade, patients may no longer be treated by their physicians at a private practice, says A. J. Harper, president of the Hospital Council of Western Pennsylvania.

Instead, their physicians could be employees of a health system.

"If we look at the next 10-plus years down the road, the new model we might see is hospitals and physicians under one health system, under one corporate umbrella," said Harper."

"Hospitals in southwestern Pennsylvania, Harper said, are trying are trying to protect their markets by scooping up physicians practices to insure a steady stream of patients and revenue. The prime target of takeovers are family and primary care practices.

"It's a trend, absolutely," Harper continued. "Not only here but nationally."

Hospitals are trying to create health systems based on the model of Kaiser Permanente, said CPA Michael J. Brocks, president of Michael J. Brocks & Associates of Sewickley, a firm which valuates practices for hospitals.

Kaiser Permanente combines a hospital, health plan and physician services in a one-stop shop for health care.

It's all about turf."

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It is really all about corporate greed and nothing more. It is all about limiting options for patients.

Predicted to be gone are the days of having a physician care for you and your family that actually knows who you are. Gone will be the days where you can trust that your interests will be first before a corporation when treated by an impersonal face that may or may not actually be a physician - if this is really what is going to happen. The Wal-Mart experience for health is predicted to happen.

As horrible as it sounds, just maybe people will stop the corporatization of every single profession and industry in this country when this experiment falls flat on it's face. Just maybe people will come to their senses and put a stop to it and restore stability to the medical care system in this country.

Kaiser left several states because of this type of business practice. It was a failure then and will be again. That system will only work in liberal states where much is condoned and few relevant regulations are enforced.

I would say - "I have a dream" - but then that has been used before.

Kaiser Plans to be Leaner and Meaner during the Current International Financial Down Turn

During the years 1991 - 2003 there was another financial crisis in this country. During 1997 - 2002, things really got bad in the Kaiser Health System. That is when major cost cutting in health care under the Federal Balanced Budget Act took place. Medicare recipients suffered the most because it was their services that were cut back. Previously unimaginable shady deals were developed due to the repercussions of this act. The patients suffered because Kaiser and other HMO's felt that in order to keep their personal "Culture of Luxury" they had no other choice. Truth, honesty, just doing their job as promised to the public, and our government, seem to have never crossed their minds. Secretively limiting needed patient care and covering up wrong doing was the norm. All they cared about was keeping their government contracts and keeping the money rolling in.

The Kaiser solution was to cut back on services that were long term, cost inhibiting (by their standards) and by the overpromotion of their actual capabilities to government agencies and with inaccurate/manipulative advertising. They promised a great deal but did not always honor their promises. They also allowed or knowingly participated in unethical agendas all for their self interest of physician financial reward and retirement programs. The public must get rid of the notion that Kaiser in business for anything other than making money for the physicians. This is not a caring family doctor type of outfit.

Today, many people still remember how Kaiser knowingly allowed patients to be harmed. They still remember how there was zero accountability, arrogant corporate and government protectionism of the actual offenders and how employees outright bragged about such conduct for their personal financial gain. They still know that nothing has ever changed and that attempts to sweep such conduct under the rug continues to this day. Most of all, many people never forgot the false government promises to conduct investigations and bring about prosecutions for corporate and employee civil and criminal conduct.

All that Kaiser and government regulatory agencies ever really needed to do was root out the offenders and stop blocking prosecutions. Instead, continued cover-ups is their method of doing business. The problems will never go away with that mode of operation nor will they ever bring public trust for any except those innocents that are very unfamiliar with these types of systems.

To add anguish to the memory of what Kaiser did to numerous trusting patients and their families, often the Kaiser public contact persons were openly hostile, insulting, demeaning or at the other extreme sounded as if they had taken one too many mood altering drugs and held the attitude that they were speaking to over sheltered preschoolers. In short, by one method or another the staff openly attempted to demean and ridicule the public in an attempt to make them just go away.

As several Kaiser employees have stated over the years: "Once Kaiser determines that a patient just costs too much for them, one way or another they will make them leave." The truth is that for the truly trusting patient, the one that believes that corporations will honor contracts and that regulatory agencies will do their promised jobs, those are the people that needlessly suffer and often die from lack of medical care.

The era, once again of computer problems that crop up until patients expire or leave the system, where sudden shortage of staff prevents patient care, where unavailability of physicians occurs so patients have no true medical treatment or where not so accidental medical errors take place is currently descending fully and openly once again.

Nothing ever got better except the employee's and director's paychecks. So, here they go again:

Friday, February 20, 2009
Kaiser Permanente puts costs under the knife
Pay freeze, layoffs planned
http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/othercities/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/02/23/story1.html?b=1235365200^1782122

and

February 21, 2009

Reform of a $2.5 Trillion Health Care Industry

Former US Senator David Durenberger (R-Minn.), in his weekly e-mail
newsletter, quotes George Halvorson, CEO of Kaiser-Permanente, the
largest health maintenance (health and healthcare delivery and
financing) company in the world.

"Expecting our massive, very well-financed, high revenue, high margin, high growth, healthcare infrastructure to voluntarily reduce costs and prices and expecting them to voluntarily and spontaneously improve either outcomes or care quality is unfortunately naive. It is almost entirely funded by a steady and massive stream of fees and cash payments that have no linkage to either care quality, efficiency or results. It is magical thinking to believe that health care delivery can, or even could, reform itself in any significant way.

There is no economic reward for improving care."
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/schwitz/healthnews/167631.html

This is a reprint of one of the Kaiser Papers articles from -
http://businesspractices.kaiserpapers.org/mean-and-lean.html

Maybe the U.S. Health System should listen to Mr. Messenger

"There's an old Chinese saying, the fish rots from the head down," Mr Messenger said. "Vital reform has to be carried out to fix the serious problems, including institutional dysfunction and corruption across the public health system."
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/qld-health-minister-should-resign/2009/02/15/1234632624661.html

Maybe the U.S. Health System should start listening to Mr. Messenger.