Healthcare Roundup: HSS-Emageon Problems, Nursing Home Ratings and More

HSS-Emageon deal may be in jeopardy -- A $62 million bid by Health Systems Solutions for Emageon, a maker of medical image-analysis technology, is at risk of falling apart. In a two-step worthy of the Keystone Kops, Emageon demanded that HSS finalize the deal by Dec. 23. HSS said it asked a bank to transfer the $62 million to complete the deal, but the bank refused. Now the deadline has been extended to Feb. 11. [Source: Birmingham Business Journal]

Medicare releases first nationwide nursing-home ratings -- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released ratings of more than 16,000 nursing homes nationwide. The ratings, which give homes one to five stars in a Zagat-like format, are based on various quality measures, health-inspection reports and complaint investigations. Some nursing-home experts argued that the system is flawed, and the president of the American Health Care Association -- the industry's trade group -- predictably called them "complex and inaccurate." [Sources: CMS, iHealthBeat, USA Today]

For-profit nursing homes deliver inferior care -- A USA Today analysis of the first federal nursing-home rating effort found that nonprofit institutions outscored their for-profit rivals on quality measures. In the federal ratings, 7 percent of for-profit homes earned only one star, compared to 13 percent of nonprofit facilities. Fully 19 percent of nonprofits won five stars, versus just nine percent of for-profits. [Source: USA Today]

Pete Stark: No healthcare reform until late 2009 -- Despite predictions by some that Congress might move on sweeping healthcare reform early next year, Democratic congressman Pete Stark says a vote isn't likely until late 2009 or early 2010. Legislators will be too busy with the economy and smaller-scale healthcare issues to pass an aggressive reform quickly, Stark declared. [Source: The Hill]

Hospitals to embrace more aggressive debt collection -- With credit markets still frozen, hospitals forced to delay or cancel many capital-intensive projects and unpaid medical bills on the rise, some hospitals appear likely to move even more aggressively to collect unpaid debt from patients. [Source: Inside ARM]

Health IT group wants more money for health IT -- In today's dog-bites-man news, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society issued a report calling on President-elect Barack Obama to spend $25 billion to help private hospitals and doctors implement electronic medical records. Obama has already pledged to spend $50 billion on healthcare IT over five years, so HIMSS essentially wants half of that for EMR adoption by the private sector. [Source: Healthcare IT News]

Illinois medical center pays $36M fine after self-disclosure -- Illinois' Condell Medical Center paid $36 million to settle federal kickback allegations after the hospital disclosed the problems to the U.S. Attorney's office. The potential self-dealing and kickback problems didn't come to light until Advocate Health Care, which has since acquired Condell, began due diligence for the deal. [Source: AIS Health]

Short takes:

• UnitedHealth consumer-health portal may breed rivals [Health Plan Week]
• Kaiser Permanente gets $8.6M grant for health-related DNA "biobank" [San Francisco Business Times]
• Cleveland Clinic freezes hiring, salaries [Healthcare Finance News]
• Uninsured level in Massachusetts drops to three percent [Boston Globe]
• Hospitals lobby for federal IT, credit help [Inside ARM]
• Commonwealth Fund launches hospital-quality comparison site [U.S. News & World Report]