THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 3, 1996 TAG: 9603010006
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
Sandra Bowen's claim (letter, Feb. 28) that your editorial ``Save the council'' on H.B. 1307 in the current Virginia General Assembly contained misinformation is itself misleading.
The editorial correctly stated that information on hospital and nursing-home profits, charity care, inpatient days by payor, published in the Virginia Health Services Cost Review Council's ``Health Care Industry Trends,'' would no longer be published. That is information the public has a right to have; information that has been available in published form since about 1980; information that the public should not have to have a computer and be computer literate to obtain easily.
Historically, all of that information has also been annually distributed to the press. Now the press is scheduled to get nothing, which means the general public will probably get nothing. And that seems just what some health-care providers and insurers want.
They apparently don't want it known, for example, that most hospitals in Virginia are doing quite well financially, yet at the same time many are laying off workers and claiming managed care is reducing costs and profits. Obviously, the focus on reduced costs largely results from the desire to increase profits yet also be more attractive to managed-care firms that make their profits often by putting great pressure on physicians and others to limit the amount of care they provide to patients.
Also among the publications to be lost as a result of H.B. 1307 is the ``Commercial Diversification Survey,'' which provides information (including profits) on the various other ventures hospitals are engaged in, and the ``Consumer Price Guides to Local Hospitals,'' which are user friendly, in pamphlet form, and provide charges for various inpatient and outpatient procedures. Though insurers and managed-care firms often pay based on a percent-of-charge basis, that information is pretty much kept secret; thus, average charge by type of procedure is important in getting some perspective on how pricey a hospital may be for a patient.
Information contained in all of the council's reports has also been quite useful in our reviews of various hospital spending projects; and while some of it will continue to be published, too much of it won't be. I fail to see how that is ``part of the good news of the 1996 session,'' as Ms. Bowen maintains.
PAUL M. BOYNTON
Executive director
Eastern Virginia Health Systems
Agency Inc.
Norfolk, Feb. 28, 1996 by CNB