I am the health care, insurance and environmental reporter with Crain's Detroit Business. I was born in Sarasota, Florida, and graduated from the University of Florida. I have worked for Crain's a total of 12 years, including 10 years at CDB's sister publication, Modern Healthcare in Chicago.
05/21/13
You have to feel a little sorry for the executives at Beaumont and Henry Ford. They spent hundreds of overtime hours meeting and strategizing on how they could best make the proposed merger work. Now we will never know whether the name of the new system was to be the Beaumont Henry Ford Health System, or the Henry Ford Beaumont Health System. Or maybe something esoteric and foreign like Ultimi Health System? But seriously, over the last six months as I have talked with many Beaumont and Henry
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04/29/13
On July 1, Patricia Maryland will take ideas she developed the past five years at Warren-based
St. John Providence Health System on the road in her new job as president of health care operations and COO of St. Louis-based
Ascension Health. Ascension is St. John's parent company and the nation's largest non-profit system with 86 acute-care, long-term care and psychiatric hospitals. In 2012, Ascension earned $934 million in operating income on $23.8 billion of
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03/29/13
I was flabbergasted but not surprised when I read the headline a couple weeks ago that a large number of medical school graduates did not match with a hospital residency program this year. Of course we need thousands more doctors – 90,000 more by 2020 – to not only keep up with U.S. population trends but to also take care of up to 32 million more people with health insurance under Obamacare the next 10 years. "Match Day is usually a day of excitement, enthusiasm, and joy for medical
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03/08/13
I used to cover Carol M. McCarthy, former CEO of the
American Hospital Association, in the late 1980s and early 1990s when she would tell Congressional leaders that cutting hospitals' Medicare reimbursements – actually reductions in expected increases – would close many hospitals. Some did close, but not solely because of Medicare cuts. Most started cost-containment and quality-improvement programs. Some converted to outpatient centers or nursing homes, depending on
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02/22/13
It’s fair. It is not surprising, in the end, that a consulting firm hired by the state of Michigan found no problems in the financial package and the benefits that would accrue to taxpayers and citizens in the deal that would allow Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to convert into a non-profit mutual. The 28-page report, released to
Crain’s Detroit Business after several weeks of requests to the
Michigan Office of Financial and Insurance Regulation,
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02/01/13
The medical device industry apparently hasn't gotten the memo on the value of shared sacrifice under health care reform. To make Obamacare work, hospitals, health insurers, drug companies, medical device manufacturers – even tanning salons – had to take a haircut, or a temporary trim in their profit margins. But the medical device industry apparently doesn't like the idea of reduced profits to fund an expansion of 32 million uninsured people, a guarantee of health insurance
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01/04/13
This year will see a dizzying number of changes in the health care industry as mandated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
Under Director Marianne Udow-Phillips, Ann Arbor-based
Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation has developed a nice chart on health care reform implementation that lists the most significant provisions for 2013 that go into effect.
Some dates haven’t been set by law and some may change based on realities in the
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12/23/12
I didn't expect to write a blog about the so-called fiscal cliff because I am a health care and environmental reporter, not a political reporter. But a news release Friday about the pending 27 percent cut to physician Medicare reimbursement got me thinking about the real fiscal cliff physicians have been facing for the past 11 years.
For the record, I agree with former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, M.D., that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts Jan. 1 along with the $1.2 trillion in federal
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12/20/12
A new federal report concludes that despite regular indictments and convictions of owners of home health care agencies, Medicare fraud is still alive and well in metropolitan Detroit.
While data on home health agency fraud was not broken out by region, the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General found high fraud, waste and abuse in Detroit; Chicago; the Brooklyn borough of New York City; Miami; Tampa, Fla.; Los Angeles; Dallas; Houston; and
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12/07/12
A potential side benefit to the Michigan Legislature's approval of two bills this week that allow the Michigan Blues to convert into a taxpaying, nonprofit health insurer could give the state's biggest insurer breathing room in at least one antitrust lawsuit filed against it. While passage of Senate Bills 1293 and 1294 does not directly let
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan off the hook against allegations by the
U.S. Department of Justice and
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