Click here to download the PDF version of the revised list of contacts.
Monday, August 12, 2013
CMS Releases Revised List of Workers Compensation Set-Aside Contacts
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has released a revised list of contacts for Workers' Compensation Set-Aside Contacts. The contacts have been centralized in 6 areas of the US.
Click here to download the PDF version of the revised list of contacts.
Click here to download the PDF version of the revised list of contacts.
Bloomberg Sees Higher Costs in a Union-Friendly Mayor
How government looks at the distribution of health care benefits is insightful as to predicting the future of workers' compensation. The change of delivery mechanism implied in the comments of NYC's Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, sketch out a potential future blueprint.Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com
Warning of the fiscal danger if New York City fails to rein in its spiraling pension and health care costs, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday challenged his would-be successors to take a tough line in negotiations with the city’s unions, while worrying aloud that whoever is elected will be too beholden to labor.
“We can’t wake up tomorrow morning — the day after the election — and find that some candidate has made a back-room deal with one of the unions that sets the pattern for all the other unions that will eventually lead to stopping the growth in this city,” Mr. Bloomberg said, departing from his prepared remarks at the end of a speech in Brooklyn on the city’s economy and fiscal situation.
“We cannot afford certain things,” he continued. “It’s tough to say no. It’s particularly tough to say no when nobody wants anybody to get hurt. But the bottom line: this is the taxpayers’ money, and this is our future.”
Mr. Bloomberg’s speech, delivered at a former Pfizer manufacturing plant that is now home to some two dozen small companies, producing everything from 3D printers to kimchi, was in part an attempt to burnish his record of fiscal stewardship, which is hotly debated. He argued that he has determinedly tried to reform pensions and health care but has been stymied by unions.
Fiscal watchdogs note that his administration presided over a 40 percent increase in the city budget, and in his second term handed out raises without demanding concessions on pensions and...
Warning of the fiscal danger if New York City fails to rein in its spiraling pension and health care costs, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday challenged his would-be successors to take a tough line in negotiations with the city’s unions, while worrying aloud that whoever is elected will be too beholden to labor.
“We can’t wake up tomorrow morning — the day after the election — and find that some candidate has made a back-room deal with one of the unions that sets the pattern for all the other unions that will eventually lead to stopping the growth in this city,” Mr. Bloomberg said, departing from his prepared remarks at the end of a speech in Brooklyn on the city’s economy and fiscal situation.
“We cannot afford certain things,” he continued. “It’s tough to say no. It’s particularly tough to say no when nobody wants anybody to get hurt. But the bottom line: this is the taxpayers’ money, and this is our future.”
Mr. Bloomberg’s speech, delivered at a former Pfizer manufacturing plant that is now home to some two dozen small companies, producing everything from 3D printers to kimchi, was in part an attempt to burnish his record of fiscal stewardship, which is hotly debated. He argued that he has determinedly tried to reform pensions and health care but has been stymied by unions.
Fiscal watchdogs note that his administration presided over a 40 percent increase in the city budget, and in his second term handed out raises without demanding concessions on pensions and...
U.S. Companies Thrive as Workers Fall Behind
In 1911 most states enacted workers' compensation legislation creating a promise for a better system of benefits for injured workers. Over the decades that promise has been broken. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com
American companies are more profitable than ever — and more profitable than we thought they were before the government revised the national income accounts last week. Wage earners are making less than we thought, in part because the government now thinks it was overestimating the amount of income not reported by taxpayers.
The major change in the latest comprehensive revision of the national income and product accounts — known as NIPA to statistics aficionados — is to treat research and development spending as an investment, similar to the way the purchase of a new machine tool would be treated by a manufacturer, rather than as an expense. That investment is then written down over a number of years.
The result is to make the size of the economy, the gross domestic product, look bigger, and to appear to be growing faster, in years when new research spending is greater than the amount being written down from previous years. For the same reason, corporate profits also look better in those years.
A lot of money is spent on research and development. Nicole Mayerhauser, the chief of the national income and wealth division of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which compiles the figures, said that in 2012 the total was $418 billion, about one-third of which was spent by governments. That amounted to about 2.6 percent of G.D.P.
The other major conceptual change deals with pensions. Until now, corporate and government contributions to pension plans were counted as personal...
[Click here to see the rest of this article]
American companies are more profitable than ever — and more profitable than we thought they were before the government revised the national income accounts last week. Wage earners are making less than we thought, in part because the government now thinks it was overestimating the amount of income not reported by taxpayers.
The major change in the latest comprehensive revision of the national income and product accounts — known as NIPA to statistics aficionados — is to treat research and development spending as an investment, similar to the way the purchase of a new machine tool would be treated by a manufacturer, rather than as an expense. That investment is then written down over a number of years.
The result is to make the size of the economy, the gross domestic product, look bigger, and to appear to be growing faster, in years when new research spending is greater than the amount being written down from previous years. For the same reason, corporate profits also look better in those years.
A lot of money is spent on research and development. Nicole Mayerhauser, the chief of the national income and wealth division of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which compiles the figures, said that in 2012 the total was $418 billion, about one-third of which was spent by governments. That amounted to about 2.6 percent of G.D.P.
The other major conceptual change deals with pensions. Until now, corporate and government contributions to pension plans were counted as personal...
[Click here to see the rest of this article]
The 10 Top Workers Compensation Blog Posts This Month (July-Aug 2013)
The 10 Top Workers Compensation Blog Posts This Month
(July-Aug 2013)
In order of popularity
Jul 25, 2013,
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Jul 20, 2013,
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Jul 18, 2013,
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Aug 2, 2013,
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Jul 17, 2013,
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Jul 14, 2013,
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Aug 5, 2013,
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Jul 26, 2013,
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Jul 12, 2013,
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Jul 28, 2013,
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3 Responses for “What the Recent Data Breach Says About the State of Health IT”
The privacy of medical records is an essential component of the workers' compensation system. As the use of electronic records becomes more commonplace the need to maintain the records in a secure format becomes increasingly critical. Today's post was shared by The Health Care Blog and comes from thehealthcareblog.com By David Do, MD
While I don’t condone the storage of patient information on unapproved services like Gmail or Google Drive, this incident pretty much highlights the sorry state of information systems within the hospital and the unfulfilled need by physicians for tools that facilitate workflow and patient care.
It says something that the Oregon residents felt compelled to take such a drastic action. I don’t know what punishment – if any – those responsible were given by administrators for their “crimes.” I’ll leave it to readers to make up their own minds about the wisdom of the unauthorized workaround and the appropriateness of any punishment. But I do know that the message the incident sends is a very clear one.
We’re screwing this up. There is really no earthly reason why it should be any more difficult to share a patient record than it is to share a Word doc, a Powerpoint or yes, even a cloud-based Google Drive spreadsheet.
Why the Breach Happened
What’s going on here? Let’s say I admit a patient to the hospital. Our friend was hospitalized here just last month, and like many patients, he has dementia...
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Specialty Compounding, LLC Issues Nationwide Voluntary Recall
Specialty Compounding, LLC Issues Nationwide Voluntary Recall of All
Lots of Unexpired Sterile Products Due to Reports of Adverse Events
Specialty Compounding, LLC, a subsidiary of Peoples Pharmacy Inc., is voluntarily recalling all lots of sterile medications within expiry.
The recall was initiated after reports of bacterial infection affecting 15 patients at two Texas hospitals, Corpus Christi Medical Center Doctors Regional and Corpus Christi Medical Center Bay Area, whose treatment included IV infusions of calcium gluconate from Specialty Compounding. There is a potential association between the infections and the medication at this time.
If there is microbial contamination in products intended to be sterile, patients are at risk of serious infections which may be life threatening.
“Because of the potential association between the hospital-based infections and sterile compounded medications produced by Specialty Compounding, we are voluntarily recalling all sterile products out of an abundance of caution,” said Ray Solano, R.Ph., pharmacist in charge at Specialty Compounding. “We deeply regret the impact this recall has on our patients and the hospitals that we serve, but patient safety must always be our first concern.”
The recall was initiated after reports of bacterial infection affecting 15 patients at two Texas hospitals, Corpus Christi Medical Center Doctors Regional and Corpus Christi Medical Center Bay Area, whose treatment included IV infusions of calcium gluconate from Specialty Compounding. There is a potential association between the infections and the medication at this time.
If there is microbial contamination in products intended to be sterile, patients are at risk of serious infections which may be life threatening.
“Because of the potential association between the hospital-based infections and sterile compounded medications produced by Specialty Compounding, we are voluntarily recalling all sterile products out of an abundance of caution,” said Ray Solano, R.Ph., pharmacist in charge at Specialty Compounding. “We deeply regret the impact this recall has on our patients and the hospitals that we serve, but patient safety must always be our first concern.”
Witnesses present divergent settlement figures in Garlock estimation trial
Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com
Attorneys representing claimants suing Garlock Sealing Technologies for asbestos exposure presented a second consultant who estimated the company would need to devote $1,293 billion to a trust to settle pending and future claims against the company, a figure a Nobel prize winning economist testified was unreliable because of what he said was questionable methodology Friday.
Francine Rabinovitz, president of Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Associates, said she relied on the past five years of asbestos litigation data to come up with the figure. A Garlock consultant previously testified the company would need to devote a significantly less amount – $270 million. Rabinovitz said she arrived at her figure by estimating the size of the population exposed to asbestos, the proportions of persons exposed to asbestos who develop mesothelioma, and the cost of defending asbestos claims among other factors.
Rabinovitz’s figure comes close to the estimate of Mark Peterson, a lawyer with a Ph.D. in social psychology who does estimations for trusts and was also called to offer his estimation in court by claimant attorneys. Peterson came up with a figure of $1.365 billion to cover liability Garlock would likely face from people who have pending claims against the company and future claimants who will develop cases of mesothelioma in the coming years.
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