A Republican congressman who will head the chief investigating committee in the House of Representatives says his party needs to look into cutting what he characterizes as the overuse of costly medical devices.
Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from San Diego, will head the Oversight and Government Reform Committee when Republicans take control of the House next month. He recently told the Wall Street Journal that one of his top concerns will be cutting medical costs, adding that costs of medical devices will be part of his scrutiny.
“If I can help every senior get the same care they’re getting and still save tens of billions of dollars and have no doctors cheated out of what they’re entitled to, what’s not to like?” Issa told the Journal. “My committee can help by looking at whether the government is answering and informing about the lowest-cost, least-invasive procedures.”
The article quoted a Senate Finance Committee report mentioning that Medicare, the federal health insurance program for seniors, paid more than $100 billion in the six years through 2009 for 6.9 million procedures that involved medical devices.
The report suggested that expensive cardiovascular and orthopedic implants were overused by doctors, sometimes after aggressive promotion by device makers.
As an example, Issa told the Journal that his personal doctor told him that surgeons had incentives under Medicare to implant many joint and bone screws to support patients’ spines even when fewer implants or none at all might be equally effective and safer.
It might be time to allow Medicare to consider cost-effectiveness as well as efficacy in its coverage decisions, Issa said. Current Medicare rules don’t allow the consideration of costs.
The cost-effectiveness issue flared up during the healthcare reform debate in late 2009 and continued until President Barack Obama’s plan passed in March. In particular, Republican lawmakers claimed that reform could lead to what they characterized as government death panels.
But Issa said that Republicans had to “step back from the words ‘death panels’” and focus more on costs.
In 2006, Issa received an award from the California Healthcare Institute—a La Jolla trade group with Orange County companies among its membership—for what it called the lawmaker’s “thoughtful leadership advancing biomedical science, biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device innovation.”
Tenet Takeover Bid
Earlier this month, Wall Street hailed a takeover bid for Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp., which owns three local hospitals.
Community Health Systems Inc., a hospital company based in Franklin, Tenn., made a $7.3 billion bid for Tenet at the beginning of December. That offer was a 40% premium to Tenet’s closing price of $4.29 at the time of the bid.
The news sent Tenet’s shares up more than 50% within a day.
But Tenet’s not biting on Community’s offer.
It sent a letter to Community’s board saying that the offer was “opportunistic, grossly undervalues Tenet and fails to reflect Tenet’s prospects for continued growth and shareholder value creation.”
Community has pursued Tenet for some time. It made an overture to Tenet in November, a proposal that was rejected about three weeks ago.
Tenet’s local hospitals are Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, Los Alamitos Medical Center and Placentia-Linda Hospital. Tenet once was the largest hospital operator in the county, but has reduced its local holdings in recent years.
More Dentists Seek Services
Dental service groups that handle various administrative and support services to free up dentists to concentrate on their practices are becoming more common, according to a survey from a trade group.
The Dental Group Practice Association is a Cleveland-based group that includes Smile Brands Group Inc. and Pacific Dental Services, both of Irvine. The trade group’s 22 members combine for $3 billion in revenue.
The group’s recent survey found that more dentists are seeing value in working with dental service groups amid economic uncertainty and increasingly complex red tape from insurers, according to Edward Meckler, executive chairman of the Dental Group Practice Association.
Bits and Pieces:
CombiMatrix Corp., an Irvine biotechnology company, voluntarily transferred its stock listing to the Nasdaq Capital Market from the Nasdaq Global Market. CombiMatrix also said it hired Tim Flores as director of sales for its CombiMatrix diagnostics unit. Flores’ experience includes 16 years with Abbott Diagnostics, a unit of the Chicago area’s Abbott Laboratories … NextGen Healthcare Information Systems Inc., a subsidiary of Irvine software maker Quality Systems Inc., said that its NextGen Inpatient Clinicals version 2.4 received a certification that is in accordance with criteria adopted by the secretary of Health and Human Services. NextGen said in a release that the software can help its doctor clients demonstrate “meaningful use” of electronic medical records, hence qualifying them for stimulus dollars.
