Category: Health Care
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The Real Nursing Home Scandal in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock Mike Martz has written three excellent columns that have appeared in the Richmond Times Dispatch starting March 19. Headline of one: “Virginia tries to move ahead of national ‘reform agenda’ for nursing homes.” The gist of it was that a couple of national nursing home industry organizations have taken advantage of the…
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Rich Jurisdictions Vote with Their Feet on the Virginia Department of Health
by James C. Sherlock A couple of days ago Antonio Olivo broke a story in The Washington Post that told of a law permitting Loudoun and Prince William counties to form independent health departments. It awaits Governor Northam’s signature. Having seen the performance of the Department of Health during COVID, they have decided they cannot…
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Virginians’ Money and Our Tax-Exempt “Public Charity” Healthcare Monopolies
by James C. Sherlock A generally accepted rule of thumb for the minimum profitability required for a hospital to maintain operations and fund its future is 3%. Virginia’s community hospitals as a group in 2019 had an operating margin of 10%. Most of them are filed with federal and state governments as not-for-profit public charities…
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Medicaid and Medicaid Rate Increases Boost Virginia Hospital Profitability
by James C. Sherlock Virginia in 2018 both expanded Medicaid and increased Medicaid reimbursement rates. Those changes orchestrated by Virginia hospitals took effect in 2019 and resulted in a major financial windfall to those same hospitals. I have compared the 2018 and 2019 Hospitals Operating and Total Margins spreadsheets published by the state through…
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We Are Losing Sight of Public Health in Vaccination Debates
by James C. Sherlock We in the process of losing our collective minds. I read a story in the Roanoke Times by LuAnne Rife “One-third of Virginia’s long-term care workers declined COVID-19 vaccinations, as homes reopen to visitors.” We read other stories about teachers refusing vaccinations. They do it pointing to the fact that the…
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Troubled Governance at Sentara
by James C. Sherlock I have been studying and writing about Sentara Healthcare for 15 years. Sentara has during that time both expanded significantly and been mired in seemingly endless controversies regarding such widely reported issues as: its death grip on the COPN process and business practices, which together have strangled their much weaker competitors…
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Podcast: How the General Assembly Has Changed
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in Agriculture & forestry, Blogs and Blog Administration, Business and Economy, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Demographics, Economic development, Energy, Entrepreneurs and Innovation, Environment, General Assembly, Government Finance, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race RelationsBy Peter Galuszka I haven’t contributed much to BR lately since I am slammed with non-Virginia work. I did manage to help out on a Podcast about how the General Assembly has changed the state over the last two years as Democrats have gained power. This Podcast is produced by WTJU, the University of Virginia…
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How Many Nursing Home Exposés Does It Take to Wake People Up?
by James C. Sherlock The New York Times today published a nearly 5000-word article “Maggots, Rape and Yet Five Stars: How U.S. Ratings of Nursing Homes Mislead the Public.” It is extremely well done. I recommend it to everyone. The did not mention corruption at the state inspection level except to mention that nursing homes…
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An Important Challenge to Employees of the Commonwealth
by James C. Sherlock I ask the employees of the Commonwealth of Virginia to be agents for its positive change. I will address you directly. The issue is state readiness, or rather lack of it, for the COVID epidemic. You are in the best position to know that your agency was surprised and overwhelmed when COVID…
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McAuliffe’s Health Plan: More Subsidies, More Regs
by James A. Bacon Once and potentially future Governor Terry McAuliffe stopped in Charlottesville yesterday to describe his plan for health care in Virginia if he is reelected governor this fall. “COVID has decimated us, and this COVID will be with us for years to come,” he said, as reported by The Daily Progress. “We…
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COVID Vaccination Report
The vaccination pace is picking up. My wife and I had our first round of shots last Sunday at CVS. Ironically, my daughter in Northern Virginia scheduled them for us. She had been checking the CVS website and saw that they were scheduling for two days in Richmond. (I had checked the day before and…
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Private-Equity Ownership and Nursing Home Quality
by James A. Bacon Several days ago, Carol J. Bova published data showing that 50 of the 101 Virginia nursing-home facilities rated as below average in the latest Medicare ratings belong to privately owned firms “When is the Department of Health going to enforce basic standards,” she asked in conclusion. “And when are our legislators…
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Virginia Ranks 40th of 53 in Nursing Home Ratings
by Carol J. Bova One of three nursing homes receiving Medicare payments in Virginia (35.3%) scored below average or much below average in the latest Medicare ratings found in the new Care Compare website. On February 1, 2021, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) updated its ratings report for nursing homes in the United…
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Fairy Tales, Absurdities, and COPN
by James C. Sherlock We read in the Virginian-Pilot yesterday this statement from columnist Gordon Morse: “Covering indigent care and doing so in ways that do not undermine the entire health care system is central to the existence of COPN.” In his column, he moved on to this common and reductio-ad absurdum corollary: “You can, as…
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Virginia’s Descent into Madness — Literal Madness
by James A. Bacon Do you ever get the sense that society is on the brink of a total mental breakdown? I do, and never more so than when I read the news. Indeed, after reviewing today’s news feed, I’m tempted to think that Virginia may be further down the path to mass psychosis than…