VITAL SIGNS

WALKER DUNCAN

This month, we thought we'd clean up some of the highs and lows that have come across the wires recently.

First off, to riff on Jerry Seinfeld: What's the deal with Disproportionate Share Hospital payments? Last month saw two new lawsuits filed over the contentious calculation of the payments. There was Williamson Medical Center taking the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services to court saying it is owed more money.

And Franklin-based hospital chain Community Health Systems is being taken to task, and court, by a former employee who claims the company knowingly collected come $47 million in potential overpayments.

DSH payments serve an obvious purpose of rewarding, or at least bolstering, facilities that serve higher numbers of indigent patients. But with court cases piling up, is it time to ask if the system really is worth all of the calculation headaches it's creating?

Cooper's worker-centered plan

Meanwhile the importance of those payments could become significantly reduced should Tennessee Congressman Jim Cooper get his way, although that seems highly unlikely at the present moment.

The well-regarded conservative Democrat and noted healthcare guru has joined with Oregon Sen. Tom Wyden to propose a radical plan that would dump the employer-based system we currently enjoy — or loathe, as the case may be.

Under the Cooper-Wyden system, employers would turn over the money they currently spend on health benefits to the workers themselves so that employees could purchase coverage themselves on an open market.

Corner office moves

Rural hospital operator LifePoint continued its nearly year-long game of C-suite musical chairs with the hiring of former Tenet Hospitals executive Jeffrey Sherman as chief financial officer.

Now that he has occupied that role, David Dill has jumped over to take on the chief operations officer slot. There, he replaces Bill Gracey, who announced in August of last year his intention to retire this month.

Other brief notes from the last month include:
• "Surgical GPS" company Pathfinder Medical tapped Skip Goode as its new CEO in the lead up to the launch of its product, which allows physicians pre-operative planning and intra-operative navigation in liver surgery.
• And finally, longtime healthcare industry player Clayton McWhorter is still working to keep the youngsters interested. His recently launched non-profit SHOUTAmerica is an online think tank to allow America's youth to voice its opinions on healthcare.

Walker Duncan is a reporter for NashvillePost.com, a sister publication of the Medical News. walker.duncan@nashvillepost.com