From USA TODAY:
…”Everybody’s realizing we can no longer have business as usual,” says Ken Welch, chief medical officer of Banner Estrella Medical Center in Phoenix. “We have to look at things we’re paying for that have questionable value and try and get rid of those things.”…
The movement to standardize some medical treatments is being fueled by more detailed and plentiful data that can pinpoint hospitals and doctors that are outliers. Premier, an alliance of more than 2,500 hospitals and health care facilities, maintains a database that allows members to compare themselves on clinical and financial measures…
Mounting pressures, including reduced reimbursements from publicly funded health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, have spurred more hospitals to act, spokeswoman Amanda Forster says. “Before, doctors have not standardized because they would say, ‘My patients are different. They’re sicker,’ ” Forster says. “There was a dearth of data to prove anything to the contrary.”
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