Blood Pressure Drug Toprol XL Combined with Diuretic Dutoprol Approved by FDA To Treat High Blood Pressure

Toprol has been around a long time and now we have a new drug with being combined with a low dose diuretic medication.  There are many blood pressure drugs on the market and Astra-Zeneca appears to be keeping the drug affordable although there are some  that are even less. 

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The drug maker said it will charge $18.33 per month when a 90-day supply of the combination drug is ordered with a valid prescription, whether or not the patient has insurance. Retail drug stores also will stock the combination medication.

AstraZeneca said the drug may not be recommended for people with a significantly slow heart rate, uncontrolled heart failure, abnormal heart rhythm or allergies to the drug's ingredients.

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/04/13/drug-approved-to-treat-high-blood-pressure

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Johns Hopkins Ready To Open $1 Billion Dollar Facility and Michael Bloomberg Was On Hand for the Dedication Ceremony

This is one big building to say the least with 500 rooms.  The adult tower was named after the President of the United Arab emirates who also gave a big gift.  There’s only one patient per room and the technology is brought to the patient bedside.

The video below has a a short tour of one of the new cardiology rooms.  He says technology lives here.  You can see all the screens and roll out beds for family members who want to stay over.  They even got everything down to the art with art that has maps to study and look at.  The building was 10 years in the planning and building. 

In 2006, they entered into an agreement to have a 10-year affiliation with the General Health Authority for Health Services in the United Arab Emirates, giving Johns Hopkins the opportunity to manage the more than 400-bed Tawam Hospital in Abu Dhabi so big healthcare facilities have gone global as well.  BD 




The second video goes over the pediatric units and this is interesting with the patient being in the “middle” of the room, not up against the wall with pediatric intensive care.  The technology in each room is staggering, but it’s good thing for sure. 

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Officials from around Maryland and the Mayor of New York City were on hand Thursday afternoon as Johns Hopkins Hospital dedicated its new building.

The new $1 billion building along Orleans Street will feature more than 500 private rooms, dozens of operating rooms, 28 elevators and new emergency rooms for children and adults

The state of Maryland contributed $100 million to the construction of the building and 36 percent of the cost came from philanthropic contributors like Michael Bloomberg and The President of the UAE according to Hopkins officials.

The private rooms help with patient safety according to Dr. Ed Kasper, clinical director of Cardiology at Johns Hopkins Hospital. "Because of patient safety issues, particularly infection control you want one patient in one room. The old days of wards are over. And even the days of two beds will shortly be over," says Kasper.

http://wbal.com/article/88700/2/template-story/See-Video-Hopkins-Dedicates-1B-Hospital-Building

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Safe Shepherd–Privacy Web Service To Remove Records That Violate Your Privacy on Internet And Remove Access “Data Brokers” Making Billions In Profits Selling Data With Little Overhead

Being a privacy person advocate I thought I would give this a try and see how it works and keep in mind the company is brand new so I’m sure they will develop more services.  Right now they have a free basic service which I tried and by using a friend referral service you can upgrade to their professional version for free, or you can just pay. 

I put in my email and very basic information and found my email attached to a few others out there and selected “remove”.  The service states it will tell me when I am removed.  I have a few email addresses, and for now I am testing it on one as it appears the address is the common denominator here. 


Robert Scoble did an introductory video which offers a bit more information on how it works.  By the way this looks to be in the new YouTube HTML5 format too.  The service states I’ll be notified via email when the connections have been removed from the web, so I will watch for them and see what I get.




Again with the “data selling” business growing to such a large proportion and the billions being made here by drugs stores, banks, retail stores, social networks, insurance companies and their subsidiaries it was certainly time for such a service to emerge.  Again I still stand with licensing and taxing the “data sellers” as big business makes billions from selling data and sometimes the date gets used against you and that’s why I wrote my “Killer Algorithm” series to help folks understand how this occurs.  If Walgreens made just under $800 million selling data in 2010 according to their SEC statement, just think of how much is out there and the “huge” profits, again in the “billions” that are made with “intangible” services that have little overhead.  When I get sick though and need a cure I can’t use an algorithm to get well, still need something from the drug store, over the counter or prescription, and that’s a tangible. 

This is why it is difficult for manufacturing in some areas to get going as why would a company build a factory and hire employees when they can grab a few programmers, get a cloud or two and set up the “data mining” algorithms, grab the data, query it into “saleable” data tables and go off marketing.  This is especially true in the “predictive behavior” area as everyone wants to know where and how to market and how consumers will react and intertwine before it hits the road. 

Start Licensing and Taxing the Data Sellers of the Internet Making Billions of Profit Dollars Mining “Free Taxpayer Data”–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 17 - “Occupy Algorithms”– Help Stop Inequality in the US

Also check out “PatientPrivacyRights” which goes a bit deeper into getting permission from Patients on sharing information.  I decided after all the articles I have written here to put permanent links for those looking for privacy information as it is updated and it’s tied in with the series on the Killer Algorithms.  It takes a bunch of algorithms to go in and get your information with all the bots out there today and now it looks like we have new algorithms being developed to go in and remove it.  BD

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”We'll scan across the internet for your personal information which has been made public or is being sold.”

• Remove unwanted information

  Easily remove records which violate your privacy, are risky, or are inaccurate. We'll do all the work.

• Be the first to know

  Receive real-time alerts when your personal info appears on the web, whether you put it there or not.
  

https://safeshepherd.com/

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Medicare Agrees to Settle Hospital Reimbursement Dispute With 2,200 Hospitals in the US To Receive Approximately $3 Billion–Hospitals Paid Short–Killer Algorithms Chapter 26

Most of my posts on the Killer Algorithms have been about consumers and patients being the victims, but this time it was hospitals with bad algos short paying them.  If you scroll on down on the left hand side you can find links to the digest and couple really neat videos that will explain how algorithms deny when the math is bad as well as some great explanations on how this happens to this is Chapter 26.

This was a suit I was not aware of and it has been around for a while and it will help a “little” as does any money for hospitals who are trying to stay alive out there today.  Tenet Healthcare stands to get about $84 million.  There are still some hospitals that could have been affected that could also file suit, which is around 1200 hospitals. 

This goes back to changed Medicare made in 1998 to adjust for inpatient care that were to reflect area wages.  The error “aka the algorithm” that was calculating the reimbursement was noticed in 2006 and kept occurring and hospitals were being paid short and was not corrected until last year.  CMS was the holder of the “bad algos” this time.

The formulas were finally corrected for the year 2012 forward and it must have taken a big group of developers to nail this one down, either that or it was ignored.  The American Hospital Association had been all over this as well.  We have story after story about medical billing software and the money exchange goes back and forth as hospitals also get fined for billing errors and after this one coming from CMS, it does make one wonder if anyone really gets it right with our complicated system as there are plenty of hold to fall in.   

Bad Algorithms in Healthcare Payment Systems and Risk Assessments–Did the Hospital Bill Fraudulently or Were They Sold Formulas That Did Not Conform

There’s a lot of “flawed data” accumulating out there and a little more than a year ago I found my own bunch on the web with doctor information on the web being flawed as well with dead doctors, retired doctors and so forth listed on the grading sites.  If they weren’t dead, the listings had doctors affiliated with hospitals they had never set foot in.  This is where I found my former MD who had been deceased for 8 years still listed and was taking HealthNet insurance.

HealthGrades And Other MD Rating and Referral Sites List “Dead Doctors” on Their MD Information Pages And Even Include the Insurance Plans the “Dead Doctors” Honor

We are definitely going to have to clean up the data and the algorithms we rely on today. 

You can scream and holler all you want but until the algorithms on the servers that run about 90% of what we do anymore get changed, then nothing happens and this was the case with CMS on this one.   The same process with algorithmic formulas is also affecting smaller pharmacies and testing their existence for the future as well as they don’t even have time to calculate what their income will be when the formulas change so quickly.   BD 

Independent Pharmacies Not Able to Compete with Big Chains and Fear Going Out of Business–They Don’t Have Same High Levels of Data To Sell to Profit- Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 23

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Medicare agreed to settle a dispute with about 2,200 hospitals nationwide over a decade-long error in reimbursement rates, offering what could amount to a $3-billion infusion to hospitals already bracing for funding cuts under the federal healthcare law.

More than 200 California hospitals are included in three similar agreements reached April 5, and they stand to share a total of more than $310 million. For instance, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said it would receive $14.3 million and Long Beach Memorial Medical Center said it was due about $6 million.

Analysts say this case won't drastically improve the fortunes of hospitals facing those fiscal pressures. "It doesn't change our financial picture," said John Bishop, chief financial officer at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, "but it helps put a little salve on the wound."

Hospitals argued that Medicare committed a mathematical error and it kept recurring through last year, resulting in significant underpayments to thousands of hospitals. A group of hospitals complained about the error in 2007 and sought repayment. According to court records, the error came to light in a May 2006 email exchange between a Medicare employee and a hospital consultant.

In August, Medicare corrected the payment rates for fiscal year 2012. Federal officials didn't agree to settle the matter for prior years until last week.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-0413-medicare-settlement-20120412,0,704796.story

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Cape Cod Residents Covered by UnitedHealthcare Get Notice That Cape Cod Hospital May Not Be Part of the Their Network as of May 1, 2012

Here we go again with contracts and folks having to shift around again potentially.  It’s not better care it seems any more it’s rather “better costing contracted care” as you see stories like this almost every week and sometimes they kiss and make up and sometimes they don’t and patients have to go elsewhere. 

1200 patients were notified and that is the law that within 30 days of a potential contract change patients do have to be notified.  Those covered won’t know until 4-30-2012 or maybe a little sooner if a contract is agreed upon whether they have a yes or a no.  As the article mentions Cape Cod also owns Falmouth Hospital and several physician practices so maybe it’s more than just the hospital in the contract?  It wasn’t real clear if any practices were involved.  The hospital said there have be no rate increases in 4 years.  BD 

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More than 1,000 Cape Codders have received a letter from UnitedHealthcare saying that Cape Cod Hospital may not be part of the insurance company's health care network as of May 1.

If contract negotiations with Cape Cod Healthcare -- the parent company of Cape Cod Hospital -- fail, going to the Hyannis hospital could result in higher charges for UnitedHealthcare policyholders, the letter states.

UnitedHealthcare was responding to regulatory requirements in mailing the letters, a spokesman said.

http://insurancenewsnet.com/article.aspx?id=338150&type=lifehealth

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Governor Cuomo of New York Uses Executive Order to Establish Health Insurance Exchange

Using his executive order brought up some controversy that’s for sure and expected.  The whole exchange business is getting interesting to say the least and now there are commercial websites that offer to do the same.  The name of the first one here slays me as I don’t feel I’m a monkey and hope others would feel the same way and they could really entertain a name change.  The page allows you to put in information to create a search. 

 

“InsureMonkey” Yet One More Way to Shop for Health Insurance–The Orbitz of the Insurance Market For Shopping Rates

Last week we had yet one more entry into the crowded field so who’s going to create the best algorithms here and provide the consumer with a simple format? 

HealthCompare–Yet One More Site to Help Consumers Understand and Help Buy Health Insurance

 

I said a while back why not use the EBay platform to use for insurance plans as they already do have a few folks on there selling insurance and the data platform is good.  The governor used his Executive Order after the state lawmakers blocked legislation to create one, guess which party of course, the GOP. 

eBay and PayPal Expanding Mobile Technology Opening Up Platform to Allow 3rd Party Developers–Could it Handle Insurance Exchanges & Save a Ton of Money?

Back in August of 2011 the HHS individual heading up the exchanges resigned and I added a few comments there as that’s a tough job and who really knows how all of this will roll out.  The only thing about a government exchange is that we can be assured it’s not another company up for acquisition by an insurance firm. 

 

Health Insurance Exchange Chief at HHS Announces He Will Be Leaving–Who Wants That Job, Really…

I found this video with a short conversation from former Medicare Director, Dr. Don Berwick and he states some very points in here as well, such as not being able to be insured outside one’s home state too.  What ever system that gets used though, data wise will be using pretty close to the same software systems to add a drill down functionality for consumers to filter and search.  BD 

Dr. Berwick on Insurance Exchanges

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As he issued an executive order to establish a health insurance exchange, an online marketplace where individuals and small businesses can choose among competing health insurance plans, Mr. Cuomo said it would drive down the cost of insurance while helping the 2.7 million uninsured New Yorkers get affordable coverage.

“The bottom line,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement, “is that creating this health exchange will lower the cost of health insurance for small businesses, local governments and individual New Yorkers across the state.”

“In essence, he’s telling the Department of Health, which works for him, to get ready to do this, and to use federal money that has already come through,” Mr. Kiernan said. “There may be people that would complain about it, but I don’t think that anyone would be successful challenging the governor’s authority here.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/nyregion/cuomo-orders-health-insurance-exchange-in-new-york.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimeshealth&seid=auto

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Johnson and Johnson Gets a $1.1 Billion Dollar Penalty in Arkansas Risperdal Case

This is huge and the penalty falls on the Janssen Pharmaceutical division breaking the Medicaid law.  A letter sent out in 2003 said Risperdal was safer than the competition to tons of doctors. 
The fine was calculated by doing some math during a 3 and a half year period so the minimum fine here was 5k so times that by more than 200,000 Medicaid prescriptions.  J and J has asked for a new trial and said they would appeal if a new trial was denied.  Back in 2010 J and J was involved with a whistleblower/kickback case with seniors. 

Omnicare Agrees to Pay Close to $100 Million To Settle Case with Justice Department – Paying and Receiving Kickbacks From Ivax and Johnson and Johnson

There have been a few other cases with Risperdal and add on recalls and hips for J and J and it’s not been a great couple of years for them.  BD

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A state judge in Arkansas ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay a $1.1 billion fine after a jury found the company had minimized the risks of its antipsychotic drug Risperdal.

Judge Tim Fox determined that J&J and its Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit repeatedly broke the state's Medicaid fraud law, the Associated Press reports.

One big issue: a letter sent to thousands of doctors in the state 2003 that said Risperdal was safer than rival medicines, according to Bloomberg.

Each Risperdal prescription for a Medicaid patient during a 3½-year period represented a violation of state law. Multiply $5,000, the minimum fine, by more than 200,000 prescriptions, and you get the lion's share of the penalty.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/04/11/150429867/ark-judge-socks-johnson-johnson-with-1-1-billion-penalty?ft=1&f=1128&sc=tw

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Melinda Gates Talks Birth Control and Contraception–Giving Women the Option To Control When They Want to Have Children–TED Video

This is a great video and yes it is directed toward education and choices outside the US, it somehow is pretty timely with our own folks in Congress right now with this war on women’s healthcare.  She shares her own feelings too about how she chose when to start her own family. 
When the Komen/Planned Parenthood issue came up a few months ago this ugly topic surfaced and we saw our own supposedly educated and forward moving men in the US going backwards, over the same old topic and problem with men, “control”. One good thing here is that Melinda Gates draws the line and talks about how contraception and abortion are not the same. She was raised Catholic and plans to share this TED video with the nuns where she went to school. This is well worth the watch. BD

http://www.ted.com/talks/melinda_gates_let_s_put_birth_control_back_on_the_agenda.html

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Beth Israel Medical Harvard to Partner with NextJ to create Online Medical Dashboard For Patients to Log on and Manage Their Own Medical Records

First off e-Patient Dave will have to be all over this as he wants his “damn data” and for that matter so do the rest of us, he just has a voice that’s louder than us and represents the desired and needs of patients today.  He does some good stuff  I think this is still his hospital too so that will make him even happier. 

This is interesting that the company contracted is from Canada and they obviously were up for the challenge.  The in house EMR system was home built and has been there for years since Dr. Halamka came to town as the CIO and basically put the entire hospital on the map as far as technology goes.  The dashboard is web based and so again there’s that level of privacy and needed attention we all struggle with today.  Dr. Halamka on his own blog wrote about this topic and said “it keeps him from sleeping” at night and that can be said I think for a lot of people in Health IT as even with the best of plans you just don’t know where an attack might come from.  At any rate, this is good for the patients for sure.  BD

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One of Canada’s fastest-growing tech firms is burnishing its ivy league-reputation with a new partnership to digitize electronic medical records (EMR) for a teaching college of Harvard Medical School.

NexJ Systems Inc. will work with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to create an online medical dashboard that will allow patients the ability to access and manage their own health records online. The project draws upon NexJ’s Connected Wellness platform, which offers several Web-based applications designed to facilitate collaboration between doctors and their patients. The apps include Health Coach and Chronic Disease Management.

Beth Israel’s EMR system is called Passport to TRUST. It’s designed to enable two-way communication between physician and patient, with goals of reducing healthcare costs, avoiding errors, and improve the health of patients overall.

http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=66948

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“Devaluate the Algorithm” And “Tax the Data Sellers”–A Cure for Both Healthcare and an Economy Based Heavily on Intangibles–We’ve Lost Our Balance

Now I am very pro technology so wanted to clear the air on this post before folks get the wrong idea, as a matter of fact I used to write code, and thus going back to my roots the visualization is there along with the past where I spent over 25 years as an outside sales representative, calling on and working for Fortune 500 companies.  I thought I should mention this as it might help make a little more  sense of my opinions. 

I have no special talent but rather am just wired this way with being logical and not sitting in denial as to what is really happening.  So what about devaluating algorithms?  Its needs to be done and I might also add that we will always have both open source free software and software that you pay for as we need both. 

You take a very successful company like Microsoft who creates software for a profit and they have done a great job and develop software solutions that they sell from the business enterprise side to the consumer area, and it’s pretty much affordable.  They get boring as folks say on the stock market, but they are steady and stay with their plan and also have some open source software too.  Apple, same thing with the exception they are into the hardware side with devices, as we all know the Ipad.  Both companies do a great job along with many others out there. 

Where the rub comes in today is the stuff that runs on the web for a big part, the social networks for a big one.  Now I like them and use them for sure, but when you look at what Wall Street has done with valuation, well flash back to mortgages if you would, same thing rolling code and math beyond the average consumer’s ability to understand. 

I’m totally fair about all of this and see the need and use for social networking but when you have banks and others that purposely take and roll up a valuation on intangibles that are nothing but a bunch of code and algorithms with no physical item you can put your hand on, we have an imbalance.  “How much is that algorithm in the window worth?”
This has to be the dumbest money making marketing scheme that has ever come along with putting such outrageous values on some sticks of code .  I am not discounting the folks who created the platforms a need to make a great profit and money as they deserve it, but not to the billions that we are seeing today.  People are naïve when it comes to a lot of this.  I read where Facebook is actually going to put in a data center and there’s finally a tangible of some sorts, but really what do you get? 

We talk about the need to revive manufacturing?  How is that going to happen when companies can grab a few programmers, get a cloud and write some data mining code to capture?  It’s captured, mostly free taxpayer data, then queries are run and the data is formulated in table for sale?  Now once that is set up other than a few modifications here and there, there’s few employees needed as this is pretty much an automated process.  I’ll use my model case here too with the billions that companies make with an unlimited resource of data on the web to make money. If you look at Walgreens in 2010, they stated their intangible income of selling data was just a bit short of $800 million, so do they make that much a year selling prescriptions?  I don’t know but I would put a guess out there that the data revenue couple be toppling the drug side of their business and if not now, soon. 

So what do you get as an investor with these algorithms as a shareholder?  Do you have a certificate of algorithms that you own part of?  Can you see them, touch them, know what the programmers are going to do next, of course not.  Only your programmer knows for sure and even that is not guaranteed as things change quickly.  So as a shareholder, what do you have here?  It’s a big gamble on computer code over the web that does stuff? 

Web algorithms have more value than food, and sadly when I’m hungry I can’t eat an algorithm can I?  So why is it that food and other commodities that we need to live are rated as values much lower than these social algorithms? On the same hand when I’m sick, an algorithm can certainly help diagnose but it’s not going to cure me as I need something tangible, like a drug or device maybe, so again these social algorithms and the madness created by Wall Street with behavioral analytics if off balance.  We need both tangibles and intangibles but if we don’t get smart enough to learn how to use both in harmony we are all going to suffer.

Folks that are into math and physics know this and they also know that queries can return both accurate and desired results.  The two should be the same but they are not always, and that’s the problem.  This is why I started my series by accident called “The Attack of the Killer Algorithms” and it has a place on the front page of the Medical Quack now to help educate consumers on the power of formulas and math. 

Actually if more economists would collaborate with more mathematicians I think we might have a little better forecasting going on as many economists sometimes get those “flawed” reports and rely on antiquated methodologies of math too, so bump head guys and see what collaboration might do. 

Big business and banks use technology against you when you are naïve.  Also with all the aggregation services taking place out there, which is nice as far as gathering information, data is is getting flawed and less reliable for accuracy and that’s a fact.  Many do not know how to work with flawed data and use it more in a black and white perceptive vision to make decisions and when that happens insanity begins.  Here’s 25 articles I wrote with 25 examples and by reading here you might understand a bit more about this.


You can scream and holler all you want but until the algorithms on the servers that run about 90% of what we do anymore get changed, then nothing happens. 

Attack of the Killer Algorithms–Digest & Links for All Chapters–How Math and Crafty Formulas Today Running on Servers 24/7 Make Life Impacting Decisions About You–Updated 4-06-2012

I read the other day where someone wanted a system similar to what the FDA does as far as giving approvals and a thorough investigation into the software used and that’s not a bad idea.  Everyone talks about how far behind healthcare is, but on this topic they had everyone beat as all medical records systems used to gain stimulus incentives are “certified” and that’s a good practice by all means.  It means some of the math gets looked at.  It is not 100% as even GE who software and algorithms were certified had to have doctors resubmit as they had “flawed algorithms and data issues”.  This was their big star ship product too with EMRs.

GE Centricity EHRs Need To Fix Their Algorithms (Math)-Some Customers May Not Be Able to Attest Until The End of November After the Software Update

After reading here so far, do you not think there’s a need to look at the math?  It moves money and algorithms work behind the scenes 24/7 making life impacting decisions about us and either gives or denies.  Health insurance companies rely and live off of their algorithms for a number of things besides paying claims. 

United Healthcare has a division that is nothing but software and algorithms that used to go under the name of Ingenix but has now been renamed Optum.  How about their algorithms over the years?  Right now they are in the process of sending checks out to doctors to reimburse them for 15 years of short payments on out of network charges, and how was that done? It was the algorithms so again they give and they take away and Andrew Cuomo caught them on the flawed math.  Check this guy out who ran flawed code for a couple years and provided it to clients and he knew it calculated incorrectly.  The tech folks that worked for Madoff completely rolled over and told us what went on. 

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SEC Sues Quant–Undisclosed Error in Trading Algorithm- Miscalculating “Risk”-Healthcare Software Evaluates This Factor Too

High Frequency Trading Firm Fined $850k for Losing Control of an Algorithm in Rapid Succession Buying–Bad Math and Some Killer Algos At Work- Keep Occupying…

A Case of “Dirty” Algorithms – 2 Madoff Computer Administrators are Indicted – Illegal Coding and Networking for Big Profits

Here’s an example of a healthcare algorithm that denied care from a year back.

WellPoint Ran a Breast Cancer Algorithm to Target Members for Cancellation of Policies - “Fraud Detection” is the Catch All that Justifies the Reporting

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But even those folks at United don’t have the valuation on their algorithms that the social networks have and they run a business so again other than a great point of aggregation why are they rated so high with the cats at Wall Street building another “data trap” so brokers and others make money and the rest of us all get more money taken by other algorithms that are designed to do that in one way or another.  

Killer Algorithms are putting small businesses that you and I rely on out of business for the sake of providing more data to sell on the web…read this: 

Independent Pharmacies Not Able to Compete with Big Chains and Fear Going Out of Business–They Don’t Have Same High Levels of Data To Sell to Profit- Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 23

 

Back in January I wrote this about Richard Cordray hoping that he knows math and formulas and watched on a Sunday at a huge amount of federal agencies that were reading this so maybe someone found something in here worthwhile as it is the truth.  We are screwed if he only goes before out digital illiterate Congress to try and drill some of this in.  Believe me I talk with folks all the time to educate and get a lot of deaf ears from those who don’t want to learn or hear and would rather sit in denial just from my tine part of the world. 

President Appoints Richard Cordray as New Consumer Financial Protection Chief - Hope He Knows And Understands Correcting Flawed Math and Formulas To Battle the “Financial Attack of Killer Algorithms” On Consumers With Banks and Corporate USA

Three years ago I wrote this piece a bit in jest but boy we need something like this in place.

“Department of Algorithms – Do We Need One of These to Regulate Upcoming Laws?

So in closing here until we come out of denial and get with the math and realize that big business is eating our lunch nothing will change.  We need to put “real” values out there again and not just base an entire economy on algorithms so “devaluate the algorithm” it is.  Believe me there’s still plenty of room for profits with a devaluation process and nobody’s will go broke but we could see the wealth redistributed a little more equally and inequality gaps begin to close in. 

 

If you want to dig a little bit further, then Chapter 17 of the Killer Algorithms series is just the place as I have a suggestion on how to setup taxing the data sellers, again why should corporations like Walgreens make just under $800 million selling data.  Just think how much income the banks, hedge funds, Facebook and you name it have on cash on hand with this “easy money” that comes off our backs. We all worry about devaluating the dollar but doing the same to the algorithms will accomplish much more as the valuation of the dollar is all based on economic algorithms. 

Start Licensing and Taxing the Data Sellers of the Internet Making Billions of Profit Dollars Mining “Free Taxpayer Data”–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 17 - “Occupy Algorithms”– Help Stop Inequality in the US

DEVALUATE THE ALGORITHM AND BRING SOME BALANCE BACK TO THE WORLD OF THE TANGIBLES BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT WE EAT AND LIVE IN (HOUSES). 

The audio below is well worth listening to as Professor Siefe back up just about everything you have read here and discussed the “Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception” his book.

“Numbers Don’t Lie, But People Do”–Radio Interview from Charles Siefe–Journalists Take Note, He Addresses How Marketing And Bogus Statistics Are Sources of Problems That Mislead the Public & Government

I haven’t figured out how to serve an algorithm for dinner yet or how to wear one, much less talk to them:)  By the way this is “behind the scenes” what the Occupy Movement is all about if you have not figured that one out yet.  BD 

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Some Hospitals Are Creating “Geriatric Emergency Rooms” for Patients 65 and Older

I didn’t even know these existed and it sounds like the services and the centers are like a cross between a full ER and part nursing home characteristics as all the beeping machines are not present.  The article in the Times states the Geriatric ER rooms are more like clinics and they have some special features like non skid floors.


The part that they all talk about here though as far as aesthetics is the ceiling light that looks like a skylight that does day and night.  I think anyone could appreciate that to know what time of day it is.  I have seen the skylight in a couple hospitals here in California as well but not necessarily in the ER room and think they would be welcome anywhere.  The patients have a touch screen tablet to where they can call the nurse or listen to music too. 

Falling in the ER room was a big problem and thus this lead the doctors to try something different.  BD

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Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md., opened one of the first geriatric emergency departments, which it calls a seniors emergency center, in 2008, and its parent organization, Trinity Health System, runs 12 nationwide, primarily in the Midwest, and plans to open six or seven more by June, a spokeswoman said.

Dr. Mark Rosenberg, chairman of emergency medicine at St. Joseph’s, said he had consulted on more than 50 geriatric emergency rooms to be opened across the country, from Princeton, N.J., to California, overcoming initial resistance from doctors and nurses who saw assignments to the units as scut work.

“

They thought it was a bedpan unit, focused on nursing home patients,” Dr. Rosenberg said. “When they finally realized this was the unit that gave better health care to their parents and grandparents, they jumped onboard.”

At Mount Sinai, all arrivals go through triage in the regular emergency department and are sent to the geriatric department if they are over 65, know their name, were able to walk before the day of the hospital visit and are ranked 3, 4 or 5 on a standard emergency severity index of 1 to 5, with 1 being the sickest. Someone with a broken hip would probably qualify, but someone with an acute heart attack would most likely have to be stabilized in the regular emergency room first, said Dr. Kevin M. Baumlin, the vice chairman of emergency medicine, who founded the geriatric emergency room.

Volunteers interact with patients to keep them alert. The artificial skylight, which turns dark at night, is intended to combat “sundowning” — agitation and confusion at the end of the day. “I have to say I thought it was the hokiest thing I ever heard of, but it turns out it’s a big satisfier,” Dr. Jagoda said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/nyregion/geriatric-emergency-units-opening-at-us-hospitals.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

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Newt Gingrich Group Goes Bankrupt–This Includes the Center for Health Transformation (aka CHT)–This Guy Really Has Issues With Math and Formulas…

The CHT was an early promoter of Health IT, but as the members of the GOP quit learning and become more digitally illiterate so when the group.  Did they go bankrupt because Newt left to run for office?  Some seem to think so and maybe their top money generator was gone.  My favorite Newt story was the doctor scam and it was funny as an MD wrote in here to the Quack and told me all about it in the comments of the post below. 

Newt Gingrich Scams Doctors With Fake Prize Awards That Costs $5000

Old Newt did his one big promotion on how paper kills which was good but then it was downhill from there.  I said back in the summer of 2010 that he had no clue.  He can’t talk math except when it comes to raising money it seems and again after the one speech there’s was nothing else to hear as he truly lives in the past.  This is about the time I really started talking about the math and formulas in healthcare and I still do today and call those on the carpet who have to go back to default topics like abortions. 

Newt Gingrich Gets Healthcare Value Bass Ackwards–It’s All About Those Algorithms

My personal opinion, he grew dumb as he did not keep up with the times and way back in his career he had a listening ear but as technology moved in he just flat out didn’t keep up and worked on raising money, mostly for Newt.  BD 

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The Gingrich Group, which includes Newt Gingrich's think tank, the Center for Health Transformation (CHT), has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Gingrich severed ties with CHT when he began seeking the Republican presidential nomination in May 2011, and a Gingrich campaign spokesman told the Wall Street Journal that CHT's bankruptcy is a result of its founder's departure.

Last November, The Washington Post reported that CHT had collected $37 million from member healthcare and insurance companies between 2003 and 2011. CHT charged participating firms as much as $200,000 each, the Post said. Among the biggest sponsors were AstraZeneca, Merck, Novo Nordisk, BlueCross BlueShield Association, and UnitedHealth Group.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/healthcare/leadership/232800452?cid=InformationWeek-Twitter

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Utah Medical Data Breach Update–Number of Files Exposed Now Grows to Around 800,000

The stats on this say it is affecting one out of every six state residents. In addition this has landed the breach in the top 10 Health security failures that have bee reported since 2009.
Hackers Broke Into State Computers in Utah and Stole Medicaid Records and Other Personal Data Such as Social Security Numbers

The FBI is now in on the investigation and so far there are no reports of any of the stolen information having been used.  Just yesterday there was this article on how Medicare Fraud is becoming like organized crime with the bad folks being armed with guns and so forth.  BD

Healthcare Billing Fraud–Office of the Inspector General HHS-OIG Is Finding “Organized Crime” With Some Criminals Armed With Guns and More….

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State officials announced the new, dramatically higher numbers on Monday. Late last week, they had expanded their initial estimate and said the breach affected 181,604 Utahns on public health insurance, most of them kids on Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Whether it constitutes the largest release of personal health information by a Utah state agency, officials couldn’t say.

But it touches one in every six Utahns, landing in the top 10 health security failures reported since late 2009 to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53879423-78/information-breach-health-medicaid.html.csp

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Doctor Who Co-Wrote Beach Boys Classic Song “Little Old Lady from Pasadena” Gives up Medical License–Accused of Prescribing Medications for Himself And Suffers From Drug Abuse

This is actually a very sad story and he has had a psychiatric evaluation and had been living in dirty hotel room so now maybe he can get some help on getting his life back together.  A pharmacist at a Target store refused to fill one of his prescriptions as something was just not right.

He had been taking Xanax and Norco and the Medical Board wrote up a 17 page report on their decision and since July of 2011 the medical board he was mentally ill and not able to practice medicine safely.  BD

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Two days after a Target pharmacist in Ventura refused to fill a prescription in July 2010 that Altfeld called in for himself, he asked a patient to take a prescription, written in the patient’s name, to that Target to obtain medications for Altfeld’s use, according to the decision.

In July 2011, Altfeld was examined by a psychiatrist appointed by the medical board and determined to be a drug abuser, mentally ill and unable to “practice medicine safely,” the decision states.

Altfeld was hospitalized multiple times for mental illness, according to the board. During one hospital admission in 2010, “he was bizarre and illogical; he was rambling, intrusive and very paranoid,” the decision states.

Altfeld was interviewed by medical board investigators in a Ventura motel room in which he lived last year. The room smelled, and the bed mattress was stained with blood, according to the board.

Altfeld, who has been licensed in California since 1991, represented himself during the medical board proceedings. He could not be reached for comment.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/04/doctor-who-co-wrote-beach-boys-classic-gives-up-license.html

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Fortune 500 Companies That Make Money From Taxes–Tenet Ranked #10 On The List

As the article explains this is the “effective” tax rate  and it is at 12.1 percent o

f profits, lowest level since 1972.  The companies end up having negative income tax rates and if you look at the list, GE, is on there and there have been many articles on the web recently about how they pay very little taxes in the US. Rounding out at number 10 is Tenet and of all companies on there, they probably need the break as hospitals all over the US today are struggling to stay alive and profitable. 

Last year Community Health tried an unsuccessful take over of Tenet.  BD

Tenet Tells Community Health Thanks But No Thanks in Response to Their Submission of 10 Nominees for Tenet’s Board of Directors

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Instead of giving money to the government, it turns out more than a few U.S. companies are actually making money off their income taxes.

In a recent report by the Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 26 of 30 Fortune 500 companies examined had negative income tax rates on profits made in the U.S. between 2008 and 2011 (h/t Think Progress).

Due to these tax breaks, companies such as General Electric, Boeing and Verizon made more money after taxes from 2008 to 2011 than they did before filing them, according to the report. The 30 companies in the report made almost $6.5 billion on their taxes over the same time period. Conversely, if they had paid a tax rate of just 35 percent during that time, they would have provided the federal government with $78.3 billion in corporate tax revenue.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/09/corporate-tax-rates_n_1413268.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003#s853413&title=10_Tenet_Healthcare

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Shetty Signs Partner Agreement with Ascension Health For New “Indian” Style Managed Hospital to Be Built in the Caymans–Medical Tourism

This hospital system was originally announced back in 2010 and has been moving along slowly and the reason for the Cayman location of course is to attract more US citizens looking for medical tourism savings.

 

Cayman Islands Partner with India Surgeon To Build Medical “City” Facility With Focus on Attracting US Patients

Speaking of Ascension Health, just a couple months ago they inked out an agreement with a Private Equity Firm.  Oak Hill Capital will invest $400 million and assume $495 million in debt.  Ascension which was created in 1999 currently has 69 hospitals in 20 states.  The agreement also allows for the hospitals t adhere to the teachings of the Catholic religion.

Ascension Health and Private Equity Firm Oak Hill Capital Form Joint Venture To Buy Catholic Hospitals and Health Systems

 

As I understood the facility was supposed to be under construction last year but it doesn’t sound like that has happened yet but all the contracts seem to be lining up.  Speaking of the Caymans’s Aetna likes it there too with a  re-insurance policy that I’m sure they were able to generate some income from as well.  BD

Aetna Takes Out Reinsurance Deal In The Cayman Islands- $150 Million to Kick When Medical Loss Ratio Hits 104%

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Dr. Devi Shetty has partnered with a major American health company to create his proposed medical tourism hospital in Grand Cayman.

On behalf of his Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospitals of India group, the cardiologist signed a “document of public commitment” Wednesday, 4 April, with Ascension Health Alliance, the largest Catholic and nonprofit health organisation in the United States.

The agreement was also signed by Cayman Islands Premier McKeeva Bush and Minister of Health Mark Scotland, although the hospital will be a private enterprise with no government ownership.

Ascension will own part of the new hospital in Cayman under the partnership deal and will handle group purchasing, facilities management and biomedical engineering services, while Dr. Shetty’s group will manage the running of the hospital.

Dr. Tersigni said he hoped the collaboration between Ascension and the Narayana groups would not only benefit Cayman and the Caribbean region, but also impact how health care is delivered in the United States, as his organization learns from Dr. Shetty’s innovative approach in India to providing low-cost, quality care.

The Shetty hospital is slated to be built on 200 acres of High Rock in East End. Last month, the developers of the project hired local firm Clan Construction to build the hospital, which Dr. Shetty describes as a “health care city”, similar to facilities he has already built in India, which offer low-cost medical care to cancer and cardiology patients.

http://www.compasscayman.com/caycompass/2012/04/09/Shetty-partners-with-US-health-company/

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Ohio Drops Molina Healthcare As Medicaid Provider As Big Insurance Carriers Aetna and United Healthcare Move In

Blue Cross is also losing some business here as far as big carriers go but we are seeing the reimbursement efforts specifically being worked by both Aetna and United who both have subsidiary companies in the Health IT business as well.  Sometimes with United one may wonder if you are insured by an insurance company or a Health IT company since their daisy chain listings of subsidiaries is so long and complex to day encompassing everything from owning a bank to low income housing to a subsidiary in China that works to promote more Chinese drugs and devices worldwide and in the US.

A couple years ago Molina made big news with offering telemedicine in the state of California with a big meeting with the governor at the time. 

Cisco Systems and Molina Healthcare HMO Announce Telemedicine Pilot Program – Long Beach, California

As you can read on Molina was the hardest hit as they have been the largest carrier in the state.  BD
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A surprise decision by Ohio to shake up the providers of its Medicaid health plan marked a sharp setback for incumbent insurer Molina Healthcare Inc., MOH -26.74% which lost its contract.

Fellow incumbents Centene Corp., CNC -15.41% Amerigroup Corp. AGP -4.85% and WellCare Health Plans Inc. WCG -7.35% are also losing business in Ohio, but the loss is "most problematic for Molina," which gets about 20% of its revenue from Ohio, according to Citigroup analyst Carl McDonald. Molina's stock plunged 27% Monday, to $25.65.

Aetna Inc., AET -1.71% meanwhile, was a winner as the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services picked five managed-care organizations to serve the state's Medicaid recipients starting Jan. 1. The others are UnitedHealth Group Inc., UNH -1.47% plus nonprofits CareSource, Paramount Advantage and Meridian Health Plan.

Ohio is among the states pushing to start coordinating care for dual-eligible patients next year. But the Medicaid insurers that have been dropped in Ohio could now be at a disadvantage in that process, Goldman Sachs analyst Matthew Borsch said.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303772904577334030644545196.html

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Healthcare Billing Fraud–Office of the Inspector General HHS-OIG Is Finding “Organized Crime” With Some Criminals Armed With Guns and More….

The days of going in and finding a lone provider doing a little up-coding are starting to go away as many of those are easily found and now we have the offices that have guns and more to protect their “up-coding” millionaire businesses.   HHS has done some good work in creating their “Most Wanted” list which again fits right in with this story and the “organized” efforts that occur with fraud. 

HHS Creates 'Most Wanted' List Website for Healthcare Fraud - Office of the Inspector General

The video below shows how they are prepared for the bust and are practicing with guns ahead of the confrontation.  The government is now using technology with formulas to identify patterns which they did not have before and this is a huge help to point HHS OIG in the right direction. 

Medicare Federal Investigators Getting Algorithms to Analyze And Find Fraud-Good Move as Contractors Efforts Are Weak With Risking Loss Of Transaction Revenue

Office of Inspector General to Monitor Upgrade of CMS Computer and Data Systems and Stimulus Incentives for EHRs

In addition with use of such software then can also identify situations like this…and get the money in sooner from insurers. 

Insurers Made $450 Million with Interest Income by Holding Medicare Funds for Around 46 Days Before Releasing Payment

Back on track here you can see how this is becoming a big business and the crooks feed on the web to find doctors credentials and NPI numbers to bill to as well.  Criminals do a better job as many don’t practice healthcare, they just bill fraudulently. 

Medicare Fraud – Criminals Do a Better Job With Filing Claims And Coding Than Providers

Anyway, the video is a good look at how fraud is beginning to shape into the world of “organized crime” and some of the battles are fought exactly in that style.  The above link has a couple additional videos of interest on the same topic to include an interview with one who was caught and talked about how he functioned.    In the meantime we seem to keep chasing the hospitals for a lot of the “billing mistakes” made by consulting companies who promise a bigger percentage return and you have to wonder there as well about the software and the consultants.  It’s usually not the clinical help as they are there to take care of patients but rather the administrative areas that are responsible for the administration and costs who find their way into some of these snags.  BD




It is one of the biggest and most overlooked factors in the rising cost of health care. According to government estimates, fraud in programs like Medicare and Medicaid costs taxpayers $80 billion a year, with some estimates as high as twice that amount.
A federal fraud crackdown, some of it mandated by the Affordable Care Act, has made a dent in the problem, but the record $4.1 billion recovered in 2011 is a small fraction of the total.

Every procedure and diagnosis has a billing code. The codes are used not only for billing Medicare and Medicaid, but in many private insurance programs as well. There are already thousands of codes, used in increasingly sophisticated data analysis by authorities seeking to spot fraud.

One such business is operated by Dr. Adam Alpers, an osteopathic physician in Ocala, FL. Alpers created a video series called "Medical Coding Cash Secrets," which he sells on his web site.

http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/02/10983578-health-care-hustle-patients-caught-in-middle-of-high-stakes-numbers-game

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UnitedHealthCare Launches UHC.TV Online Video Portal–To Include Celebrities Such as Doctor Oz To Promote Better Health And Try To Be Social

Ok so what’s coming up next, Aetna TV, Blue Cross TV, oh I could go on but funny that they got Dr. Oz involved here.  I like his show and sure sometimes he gets a little controversial with some of the topics but he does a good job explaining things at layman’s levels.  I would just rather watch his show, but the the article goes on to talk about all their areas featured.  I looked around the site a little bit and there are a couple of interesting  sections for education on Medicare and Health Care Reform and it will be interesting to see what material ends up in those sections and at least I didn’t see a “click here to buy insurance” link. 

We are seeing United all over the place anymore and sometimes you see them and you don’t even know it with their huge army of subsidiary companies they own.  I cover a bit of that here under my “subsidiary watch” articles.  You can find the press release here. 

“Additional programming will be added on a regular basis and communicated via Twitter at @myUHC. Viewers can sign up for real-time programming alerts when new interviews and videos are posted. Today, for example, Dr. Mehmet Oz, nutritionist Joy Bauer, professional athlete Laila Ali, reality TV personality Matt Roloff, and bestselling author Harvey MacKay are taping UHC.TV programs in New York City.”

Back in December the company actually made the announcement with a press release very much like the one above except this was done for the benefit of investors in New York. 

“The network and website were unveiled at the UnitedHealth Group Investor’s Conference in New York on Tuesday, Nov. 29. Help get the word out by sharing UHC.TV flyer with your clients and their members.”

Next on the list is their Cloud and Apps Store which was announced not too long ago. 

UnitedHealthCare Launching Cloud Platform Via Optum Subsidiary Will Sell Apps Like the Apple Store But They Won’t Be As Much Fun And Solicit Hospitals for Record Storage

 

I don’t know how the MDs really fair with all of this since their reimbursements keep going down from all the insurers.  With so many subsidiaries and now buying up physician’s groups there’s a subsidiary company to take care of almost any need when it comes to Health IT and with having about 3 different medical records systems available they are in that business to sell those too, along with all the analytics to sell the doctors that they might need to evaluate and run their business after contract rates get cut from the insurance side. 

Subsidiary Watch-Corporate Conglomerate Insurers Reduce Compensation Contracts Using One Subsidiary Then Market Same MDs With Another Subsidiary in Health IT

We also have this going on with United buying up physicians groups across the US and 3 big ones here in southern California.  It was funny not too long ago but this makes a case here as I was talking to someone from one of the physician’s associations and they said it’s too bad that Optum is associated with United as they have done some nice things, but I guess he had no clue that Optum evolved out of the corporate structures of United and it just goes to show how folks, even in healthcare are oblivious to all the subsidiaries owned by other companies today and with the technology and payer sides of all of this somewhere along the line there’s going to be something come up with conflicts of interest as they seem to be way diversified and of course now everyone queries and sells data too.  They do their fair share of selling data and were one of the first that began this years ago with selling consumer prescription data. 

Health Insurance Contracts at the OC Corral–Lawsuits, an ACO and A Lot of Mixed Up and Confused Patients As Data Disruption and Patient Care Move Center Stage…

With some of the recent news you wonder if they are going to buying up houses for rent as a few months ago this was in the news. 

United Healthcare Gets in The Low Income Housing Business With Partnership to Finance Housing Projects in New Mexico

They have a bank with over a billion on deposit and that was as of a couple years ago so I don’t know what current deposits would be but assume larger.

UnitedHealth Group Owns a Bank With Deposits Surpassing a Billion – OptumHealth Bank FDIC Insured

We shall see how this goes and again the categories were interesting to say the least and there will be every day people with videos on the site, but again the company was built and profits from analytics and that is one thing I don’t lose site of is their extensive work with algorithms and math that produce both “accurate” and “desired” results. 

When you mention desired, just think back to 15 years of short paying doctors and patients without of network charges and the lawsuit that is just now sending some money to the doctors who were shorted.  You have to go back to the “Ingenix” subsidiary for that news a couple years ago and the name  has now been changed to Optum .  BD

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UnitedHealthcare is launching an online health and entertainment network Thursday with originally-produced content on health and wellness topics.

The health insurer's site, http://www.UHC.TV, will feature various content about nutrition, wellness, health reform and Medicare.

It is free an available to the public.

The new programming comes at a time when health insurers are promoting their newest technological advancements, ranging from mobile applications to search for nearby doctors to websites that compare prices of medical services.

http://www.courant.com/business/connecticut-insurance/hc-united-television-20120404,0,7035408.story

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Aetna States Letters Mailed to Thousands of California Customers Were A Mistake–Their Doctors Are Still In Network–”Rogue Algorithms and Flawed Data”–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 25

There were folks in Texas and in a few other places there were not as lucky and did lose their doctors, like in Texas as I posted last week.  There’s another deal though too with doctors being a “preferred” provider with insurance carriers so when it comes to contracts and staying within what they see as “normal” moving from the preferred category can be the first step towards moving closer to the door.  552 doctors across the US were cut from Aetna. 

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Aetna Notifies 130 Texas Doctors That It Will Terminate Their Contracts on July 1 – E & M Codes Primary Levels 4 and 5 Billing Analytics For Peer Comparison Used To Substantiate the Decision – Video

Other bad news though from Aetna for California customers is that the rates are going up and even the Insurance Commissioner is up in arms about the excessive charges.  This was from last week.  Sound like it’s getting hard even for Aetna to keep track of who they are cutting off with physicians. 

Aetna’s 8% Rate Hike for Small Businesses in California Excessive Says State Insurance Department But Nothing They Can Do About It

At any rate if you are a customer in California their “rogue” letter mailing algorithm gotcha.  You know if they can’t get the letters right how do they do

with claims and their business intelligence I wonder?  I guess ok as they are still making millions in profits and paying shareholders. 
This is yet one more “Attack of the Killer Algorithms”, all chapters at the link below with more links:)

Attack of the Killer Algorithms–Digest & Links for All Chapters–How Math and Crafty Formulas Today Running on Servers 24/7 Make Life Impacting Decisions About You–Updated 3-11-2012

Last year Aetna did pull out of Colorado and the effective data of that move is August of 2012 for individual health insurance policies. 

 

For those those who have lost their doctor who are members of Aetna, there’s always “The Life Game” online that you can play and become a social heath gamer and probably give away some data for sale while you are at it or go to Best Busy to where they are hawking healthy software for consumers. 

Aetna To Offer Online Game Social Game For Personal Wellness- Joins Humana As They Have An Online Game Called FamScape

If only the same focus and care went into customer relations as does the work and efforts on games that probably collect data for sale perhaps some of those rogue algorithms that kick out letters by mistake could be kept in check:)  BD

 

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Aetna says letters mailed to thousands of its California customers mistakenly telling them their doctors were no longer in the insurer's network were not related to the health insurer cutting 552 doctors from its network nationwide.

The Hartford-based health insurer did not cut any medical providers in California as part of the changes to its network.

"In no way were the mistaken California letters related to that issue," said Aetna spokeswoman Susan Millerick. "The network is always evolving and this was a basic manual error."

The Sacramento Bee reported Thursday that more than 8,000 Aetna customers received letters in the mail in recent days, which mistakenly told them their health care provider is no longer covered in the insurer's network.

"The terminations in the system triggered auto-generated letters to be mailed out, notifying members that their provider was no longer participating in Aetna's network," Millerick said. "We have rectified the problem and are in the process of mailing out retraction letters to members and notification letters to the providers who were terminate.

http://www.courant.com/business/connecticut-insurance/hc-aetna-california-customers-20120406,0,7869846.story

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