Word: systemics
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...Steele decided to fix this, switching Geisinger over to a prix fixe, episode-care model for surgery, starting with the heart bypass. Under the new system, a closely coordinated team of caregivers would be responsible for every stage of a bypass patient's treatment and recovery. The hospital would submit a single bill for all work and include a 90-day warranty. If a patient checked back in with a complication like a postsurgical infection, that work would be on Geisinger's dime. "We'll do it right, or we won't send a bill" was how Steele...
While you might not need a computer to tell you that an 80-lb. 4-year-old needs to lose weight, it helps when the same system also warns about a food or drug allergy or a missed measles vaccination. When a child Grauso-Eby treats goes to see a specialist, that doctor will see the same chart, and an alert will flash if the two doctors are prescribing drugs that adversely interact. The chart will track the kid throughout life - for the orthopedist or cardiologist or obstetrician he or she sees in later years. (Watch TIME's video "Uninsured...
Running the Numbers For doctors, lawmakers and anyone else embroiled in the health-care-reform debate, the question is, Can a system like Geisinger's go national? The short answer: in some ways it has. Pay-for-performance, episode care and global coverage have been seeping into health plans for a while...
Geisinger's financials are undeniably rock-solid: the system pulls in about $1.5 billion per year from its premiums and from other insurers, and it has a AA credit rating. But part of that is due to the similar solidity of its patient base - a homogeneous population with a predictable range of ills. The financial team prefers things this way and has resisted any calls for expansion. "We've purposely stuck to our knitting in central Pennsylvania," says Dr. Duane Davis, chief medical officer of Geisinger Health Plans. But larger plans trying to serve more-diverse communities don't have...
Despite those numbers, the banking system is no longer at risk of collapse. Megabank JPMorgan Chase, for instance, announced on Oct. 14 it earned $3.6 billion in the third quarter. Most of the institutions in danger are small. But those failures are straining the FDIC, which underwrites the nation's saving and lending by insuring deposits. When a bank fails, the FDIC makes up the difference between what's left and what's owed depositors, up to $250,000 per person per bank. Two years ago, the FDIC had about $52 billion in its deposit-insurance fund. Today that fund...