Glenn krauss on LinkedIn: Clinician Crime: May 2024 Round-Up (2024)

How private equity rolled Red LobsterAssigning blame for company failures is tricky. But some analysts say the root ofRed Lobster’s woeswas notthe endless shrimp promotionsthat some have blamed. Yes, the company lost $11 million from the shrimp escapade, its bankruptcy filing shows, and suffered from inflation and higher labor costs. But a bigger culprit in the company’s problems is a financing technique favored by a powerful force in the financial industry known as private equity.The technique, colloquially known as asset-stripping, has been a part of retail chain failures such as Sears, Mervyn’s and ShopKo as well as bankruptcies involving hospital and nursing home operations like Steward Healthcare and Manor Care. All had been owned by private equity.Asset-stripping occurs when an owner or investor in a company sells off some of its assets, taking the benefits for itself and hobbling the company. This is exactly what contributed to Stewart Healthcare's downfall, Cerberus Capital sold the health system's real estate to a real estate trust, saddling the hospitals with an above-average rent rate that consumed a large portion of revenue, leaving little money to invest in its plant and pay vendors. Cerebus Capital walked away with $800 million extracted from Stewart.This fact is scary-Some 12 million workers are employed by private equity-backed firms, or 7% of the workforce. Companies bought out and indebted by private equity go bankrupt 10 times more often than companies not purchased by these firms, academic researchshows. In areportthis month, Moody’s Ratings said leveraged buyouts like those pursued by many private-equity firms drive corporate defaults higher and reduce the amounts investors recover when the companies are restructured.Private equity investment in healthcare needs to be closely scrutinizedso there is no repeat of Stewart Healthcare.#privayequityinvestors, #privatequityvultures, https://lnkd.in/empp3eHH

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Do You Really Know a UTI When You See It?Urinary tract infection (UTI) and community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) are the most common infections treated in hospitals. UTI and CAP are also commonly overdiagnosed, resulting in unnecessary antibiotic use and diagnostic delays. The current diagnostic paradigm includes UTI, asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB), or not UTI, but the researchers believe these categories exclude for more ambiguous clinical cases, such as patients whose bacteria counts are low but who are symptomatic, or when nonspecific symptoms make it difficult to determine whether treatment with antibiotics is appropriate.How many patients hospitalized with a documented UTI are arrived at from a CDI query, looking for the proverbial CC to raise the CDI"s CC/MCC Capture Rate as part of their Key Performance Indicators.#CDI, #misdiagnsoisofuTI, #asymptonaticbateriuria,https://lnkd.in/eWndjpT9

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The Lure of Specialty Medicine Pulls Nurse Practitioners From Primary CareMore NPs are migrating from primary care to specialty care like cardiology, gastroenterology, or nephrology. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants are advanced practice clinicians who must complete distinct education, training, and certification steps in addition to graduate degrees. NPs can practice without a doctor's supervision in more than two dozen states, while PAs have similar independence in only a handful of statesSuppose I need to see a specialist for a specific health issue. In that case, I prefer to visit with a board-certified physician with specialized clinical training and experience to assess my health condition. I speak from first-hand experience over the last few years where it took an old-fashioned specialist to arrive at the correct diagnosis, where he took the time to listen to my History of Present Illness, used his depth and breadth of knowledge and experience, where others continued to send me for test after test.#NP, #specialitymedicine, #specialitytraining, #advancedtraininghttps://lnkd.in/eCDwcmjk

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Knowledge Is Power: Will AI Democratize Medicine?— An adapted excerpt from the new book,ChatGPT, MDWhile patients can consult "Dr. Google" about their symptoms, it rarely helps. Many of my colleagues are physicians, frequently they come to the office for a problem-focused visit and provide a diagnosis they think they have from researching the internet. This article goes on to state: "With training on how to enter comprehensive medical information, patients will soon have the ability to make an accurate diagnosis, monitor their chronic diseases, and obtain reliable answers to medical questions -- skills that today remain the sole purview of clinicians."It will be interesting to see if AI will replace the physician, I confidently say not in my lifetime as medicine is still an art where clinical judgment and medical decision-making will still be needed to best serve the clinical needs of the patient.#AI, #medicine, #practiceofmedicine, Patrick Desamours, PA-C, MBA, SFHM, CHCQM, Cesar M. Limjoco, M.D.https://lnkd.in/eMWnT4MV

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UPMC's layoffs were the start of a McKinsey-guided 'transformation,' documents showSo disheartening to read and learn about the abrupt layoffs of UPMC employees, some of these people devoting their careers and faithful work on behalf of UPMC and their patients. I have seen this phenomenon many times, especially with large healthcare institutions that are top-heavy in management. This health system has its priorities wrong with large expenditures on building a new hospital and maintaining a corporate jet to ferry around its executives.Compensation for the top 12 wage earners at UPMC$12,880,205:Jeffrey A Romoff, UPM Former Pres and CEO$ 4,211,830:Leslie C Davis, UPM SVP and COO HSD$ 3,981,291:Diane Holder, UPM EVP, Pres UPMC Health Plan*$ 3,661,851:Steven D Shapiro, UPM EVP, Chief Med and Sci Officer$ 3,666,248:David Farner, UPM EVP and Chief of Staff$ 3,376,450:Stanley Marks, UPC Board Chair*$ 3,196,500:Matthew El-Kadi, PSV Board Member*$ 2,979,948 :Victor Morell, UPP Board Member$ 2,812,462 :W Thomas McGough, UPM EVP and Chief Legal Officer$ 2,801,611:Abhinav Humar, Transplant Surgeon$ 2,496,848:James D Luketich, Board Member and Dept ChairTheir salaries can cover more than a few laid-off employeesWhy do business with McKinsey consulting company in light of the following:McKinsey is also undercriminal investigationover its work with drug manufacturers, such as Purdue Pharma, to maximize revenues from the sale of opioids. The firm, which has not admitted any wrongdoing, has agreed to about $1 billion in settlement payments related to its opioid industry consulting since 2021#McKinsey, #layoffs, #misalingmentofpriorities, #cruel, #badfaith, #UPMChttps://lnkd.in/eBzn38Pm

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https://lnkd.in/ecQivcp2Cost-cutting, private equity and piles of shrimp: What really drove Red Lobster into bankruptcyThere has been much talk about the "All You Can Eat Shrimp" promotion that Red Lobster is well known for and made permanent contributing to their precarious financial situation and need to file bankruptcy. Further analysis of Red Lobster's financial debacle indicates there were other mitigating factors at play including the private equity owner selling the restaurant's real estate and collecting quick cash, putting the restaurant chain in serious debt with high real estate rent payments that it could not ultimately afford. In a wider sense, many commentators have claimed this saga as an example of how the private equity business model destroys viable businesses by treating them as short-term cash cows and selling off their assets.“Once they sell the real estate, then the private-equity company is golden, and they’ve made their money back and probably more than what they paid,” Eileen Applebaum of the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research toldBusiness Insider.Sound familiar: This sounds like the saga of Stewart Healthcare and Cerebus Capital selling the real estate to a real estate trust, leaving the healthcare system with large rent payments that it could afford. Meanwhile the PE vultures made out like a bandit, ultimately cashing in on $800 plus million. Another PE play, draw out the profits for the company and shareholders and leaves the business in shambles.#privateequityvulchers, #getthemoneywhileyoucan, #redlobster

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Here's what the CEOs and CFOs of public for-profit health systems made in 2023Check out the exorbitant total compensation the CEOs and CFOs of the publicly traded for-profit hospital operators earned in 2023. The CEO to median worker pay is lopsided towards the C suite. The question to ask is how much of the CEO's compensation was earned on the back of hospitals and providers through denial of medically necessary care and delays in payment to hold onto the provider's money as long as possible. Publicly traded for-profit healthcare operators have one objective: profits for the C suite and shareholders at the expense of providers and the beneficiaries of these companies. My neighbor recently hiked 110 miles of the AT trail beginning in Georgia and hurt her knee and lower leg, in such tremendous pain. Her PCP has spent hours trying to justify a MRI after an X-ray and CT scan. My advice to my neighbor, during next Medicare Enrollment Open season, jump sh*t and return to traditional Medicare.#medicareadvantage, #excessiveCEOcompensation, #patientslose, #providersonthelosingendofthestickhttps://lnkd.in/eksdYnaP

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Toxic Gaslighting: How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were SafeDecades ago, Kris Hansen showed 3M that its PFAS chemicals were in people’s bodies. Her bosses halted her work. As the EPA now forces the removal of the chemicals from drinking water, she wrestles with the secrets that 3M kept from her and the world.3M's actions beckon the question of honesty, ethics, and integrity, attributes all business actions and decisions should be based. This is the same 3M that incorporated 3M Health Information. The company divested its HIM division and has rebranded itself as Solventum, which originates from two words: "solving" and "momentum."Solventum, the spinoff of 3M's healthcare business, is starting as Minnesota's newest public company with a heavy debt load and stagnant sales. The Maplewood-based company has$8.3 billionin long-term debt and is projecting slightly negative to no revenue growth for its first full year of existence. Enormous debt was one of the main contributing factors to Stewart's eventual bankruptcy. It will be interesting to see how Solventum can manage its high debt load.#3M, #debtload, #honesty, #integrity, #businessdecisions https://lnkd.in/eE7egvYH

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CFOS ARE SHIFTING ATTENTION TO THESE 4 MAKE-OR-BREAK TRENDSThis article from HealthLeaders caught my attention for the following- CFO's take note, if your CDI vendor pitches their software as a tool that enhances CDI efficiency in reviewing records that have the best opportunity for documentation improvement, i.e, securing a CC/MCC and raising the CMI, do not take that sales pitch on face value. If your CDI software vendor sends you reports indicating a jump in CMI and CC/MCC from using their AI software, please validate the data. You must analyze your own financial data and determine if your CDI program and its use of technology are generating net patient revenue. My personal experience time and time again is that CMI is a warm fuzzy feel-good number unless you factor in clinical validation denials and missed CDI opportunities to improve physician documentation and alleviate the steadily increasing costly payer denials and financial takebacks. These add up and impact the bottom line. Watch this short 1-minute video and learn if your CDI program is as successful as your CDI vendor and CDI leadership is leading you to believe.https://lnkd.in/eHGXaYSK Attendees agreed that CFOS must assess the true ROI of their technology solutions and initiatives, especially since many vendors don’t come armed with any data.Implementing technology that streamlines workflows and enhances patient care may lead to shorter LOS, but CFOs must evaluate the financial impact of these efficiencies.“At our hospital, we implemented new technology that reduced our LOS, but I had to add 20 other FTEs to accommodate for the tech,” Wallace said. “So, CFOs need to be aware that a reduced LOS does not always equal an increase in revenue.” By conducting thorough financial analyses and performance evaluations, finance leaders can ensure that their technology investments are generating sustainable revenue growth and improving overall financial performance.#technology, #ROI, #returnoninvestment, #donotbelieveyourCDIvendor, #vendorsstretchthetruth, #validatedenials

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