"There are many well-paid lawyers whose job it is to figure out what this hospital did, but in a way that passes legal muster," he said. "If you're complying with the letter of the law but violating the spirit of the law, what good is that? There is a soft creeping corruption in these arrangements all over the country."
Dealmaking of this type is symptomatic of profit-driven healthcare, Saini said: "We have a system in which hospitals really have to compete for revenue and high-margin business because we treat them like a normal business. But healthcare is not a normal economic activity. There is a fundamental disconnect here."
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The CARES Act lets out-of-network providers set their own prices for COVID-19 diagnostic and antibody tests. A new study finds that has resulted in a wide range of charges.
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The substantial rise of private equity investment in women's health and fertility clinics comes with unknown implications.
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Studies show that at least half of ground ambulance rides across the nation leave patients with “surprise” medical bills. And a $300-a-mile ride is not unusual.
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Wealthier health systems might be generating a margin treating COVID-19 patients, while others are losing money. Policy experts urge HHS to consider that divide when allocating remaining grant money from the CARES Act.
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Local hospitals that treat large numbers of poor and uninsured patients scored the best in a new national ranking that evaluates hospitals based on their commitment to equity, inclusion and community health. Meanwhile, hospitals owned by some of the area's largest chains, including Northwestern Medicine and Advocate Aurora Health, got lower marks from the Lown Institute, a think tank based in Brookline, Mass.
"As a business person, it makes perfect sense to go where the revenue opportunity is," says Lown President Dr. Vikas Saini. "If you say, go where the rich people are or go where the white people are, it doesn't sound so good."
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The Lown List of Independent Health Experts is a resource for journalists to find sources without financial conflicts for stories, facilitating more balanced health care journalism.
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What are safety net hospitals and why do they matter? In this latest edition of “Lown Hospitals Q&A,” Shannon Brownlee and Vikas Saini answer three questions about safety net hospitals.
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Pandemic relief money more than made up for lost revenues at some hospitals
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Congress sought to ensure that patients would not face costs connected to the virus. But rules are not always being followed.
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Industry payments can encourage the uptake of new medicines and devices in some of the most influential medical institutions in the country.
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A series of disasters shaped the FDA into what it is today. We need to make sure that this pandemic moves the agency in the right direction.
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Public health experts say that while companies may be legally covered, they still have a high degree of interest in showing a vaccine is effective. “For many drugs, trials are oriented to showing efficacy and a minimal level of safety, then our system allows them to be released into the wild, into the marketplace,” said Dr. Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Massachusetts that advocates for health care reform.
If any of the current vaccine trials show high efficacy there could be political pressure to rush it to market to save lives and help return the country to normal. “We desperately need a vaccine. It would be a game-changer,” said Saini.
“So, what we face is a genuine trade off that is now being distorted horrendously by the politics. We may get a signal of efficacy before we get a signal of safety,” said Saini.
That presents a dilemma for whoever is president. "Trying to time good news results around Election Day for political advantage is not a Trump thing or a Biden thing. That’s what politicians do. And it’s been dirty business long before Trump,” Saini said.
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A new study finds that for-profit hospitals are spending the same amount proportionally on charity care as nonprofits.
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In New Orleans, hospitals sent patients infected with the coronavirus into hospice facilities or back to their families to die at home, in some cases discontinuing treatment even as relatives begged them to keep trying.
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Vaccine development and use depend on data-driven assessment of benefits and risks, first by regulatory bodies, and then more subjectively, millions of times over, by individual physicians and patients.
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"For any given individual in the short run, going to Canada is a decent solution, but it's not a systemic solution," says Dr. Vikas Saini, a Harvard-trained cardiologist and president of the Lown Institute, a nonpartisan healthcare think tank.
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Since the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic in early March 2020, there has been a deluge of articles describing its horrible effects on hospital finances.
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A sudden change in federal guidelines on coronavirus testing came this week as a result of pressure from the upper ranks of the Trump administration, a federal health official close to the process tells CNN, and a key White House coronavirus task force member was not part of the meeting when the new guidelines were discussed.
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A new hospital ranking by the Lown Institute finds that some of the biggest, most prestigious medical institutions in the country perform poorly on indicators such as inclusivity (defined in the study as the extent to which they treat patients with low incomes and educational attainment, as well as people of color), delivery of low-value care, and community benefit.
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