Kaiser Health News -- The Wall Street Journal: “Hospitals lack leverage when negotiating prices for high-cost implants like defibrillators and replacement hips because individual doctors, rather than hospitals, typically select the products they use in their patients. Since these doctors often aren’t hospital employees, they have little incentive to bargain-hunt. New health rules, however, call for more testing of ways to bring doctors’ financial interests more in line with those of hospitals.” Currently, Medicare pays doctors and hospitals separately. But under the Acute Care Episode demonstration project, the federal program will combine payments to doctors and hospitals while also measuring patient outcomes.
