Healthcare Roundup: Sebelius Confirmed, CIGNA Cost Estimator, HCA's Marvelous Coder, and More

(MoneyWatch)  Sebelius confirmed ?€" The U.S. Senate confirmed Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas as Secretary of Health and Human Services on Tuesday, and President Obama quickly swore her in as the final member of his cabinet. While her first order of business will be the swine flu emergency, she is expected to help lead the charge on health care reform. With Nancy-Ann DeParle helming the White House office of health care reform, and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag wielding considerable influence in the same sphere, it will be crowded in that wheelhouse. [Source: California Healthline]

CIGNA wants you to know ?€" CIGNA has extended its cost of care estimator to almost all of its 550,000 contracted physicians, hospitals, and free-standing clinics. This enables physicians and patients to estimate bills for medical treatments, based on doctors' contracts with CIGNA. Physicians can use the estimator to help collect the portion of charges that patients will have to pay. According to a CIGNA survey, 80 percent of patients found the estimator helpful, and 72 percent said that seeing an estimate of their bill upfront made it more likely that they would pay it. [Source: Healthcare Finance News]

HCA Q1 profit boosted by ED coder ?€" HCA's pretax income for the first quarter rose to $360 million from $170 million for the prior year period. Revenue increased 4.3 percent to $7.43 billion. The nation's largest for-profit hospital chain attributed much of its improved results to the use of a new emergency department coding procedure developed by the American College of Emergency Physicians. The improvement in coding accounted for between $75 million and $100 million of its first-quarter income. Same facility-equivalent admissions increased 1.9 percent during the period, compared with the first three months of 2008. [Sources: Modern Healthcare, HCA]

Aetna spends a bit more on health care ?€" Aetna, the third largest health insurer, reported first-quarter net income of $437.8 million, up slightly from $431.6 million in the prior-year period. Revenue rose 8 percent to $8.61 billion as enrollment jumped 9 percent to 19.1 million. Yet the market slashed Aetna's stock price because its medical loss ratio--the amount of premiums it spends on patient care--rose to 81.7 percent from 79.8 percent. By industry standards, that it isn't very high, but investors don't like it when insurers pay out more in claims. [Source: Reuters]

Money talks, nobody walks ?€" This isn't a new news item, but we couldn't let it slip by. Back in late March, the Maryland Senate narrowly defeated a proposal from Gov. Martin O'Malley to crack down on Medicaid fraud. Modeled on laws on the books in many other states, the bill would have given Maryland officials more leeway to pursue fraud perpetrators and collect damages. The main opponents were health care providers and drug companies, who claimed that the measure would have prompted frivolous lawsuits and added to administrative costs. 'Nuff said. [Source: Baltimore Sun]