Lawrence Massa, president of the Minnesota Hospital Association, standing with Cook County North Shore Hospital Administrator Diane Pearson. Massa met with North Shore Hospital and Sawtooth Mountain Clinic staff and board members Wednesday, July 1, 2009, updating them on the association’s advocacy efforts on behalf of Minnesota hospitals. Massa set out to visit all 147 of Minnesota’s hospitals when he began his tenure last October.
Cook County North Shore Hospital received a visit on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 from Minnesota Hospital Association President Lawrence Massa, roughly the 40th of 147 Minnesota hospitals he has visited since he began his tenure last October.
Almost a dozen and a half staff and board members from the hospital and Sawtooth Mountain Clinic listened as Massa outlined the association’s lobbying efforts on behalf of Minnesota hospitals.
The Minnesota Hospital Association is committed to affordable access to quality health care for all Minnesotans, Massa said. This will be a challenge, however, because of the state’s aging population and its limited resources.
The association maintains a large database of information used by hospitals, research organizations, and the legislature (which pays for the information). One of its core values is organizational accountability. It maintains a “patient safety registry” of “adverse events” that can help member hospitals learn from others’ mistakes and develop safe practices.
As Baby Boomers retire, Massa said, the hospital industry will need to redesign its workforce, because hospitals will simply not have enough people to fill jobs in the way they have been filled in the past.
Massa described the association’s response to numerous legislative initiatives that have included legal recourse for employees who blow the whistle on government contractors making false billing claims, mandated staffing ratios, and payment caps for independent and hospitalbased birthing centers.
If you come to the health care industry from the world of business, Massa said, “you become aghast very quickly” because they do not work the same way. Massa decried items in Governor Pawlenty’s proposed budget that called for rate reductions to hospitals and elimination of adult coverage under Minnesota Care. Since hospitals provide care to all who come to their emergency room doors regardless of ability to pay, they are faced with different challenges from other service providers, Massa said.
In the end, Massa said, the governor signed the legislature’s spending bills but did not sign the bill authorizing payment for those bills, leaving him with the ability to “un-allot” programs. The Minnesota Hospital Association will be working to come up with ideas to offer the legislature regarding how to cover necessary expenditures without adding to the state’s budget deficit.
Massa said that Minnesota has a reputation for providing high-quality health care at low cost. Medicare payments in Minnesota are substantially lower than those in some other states, such as Florida and California, he said.
The “Dartmouth Atlas Project,” a research engine that studies medical resources in the U.S., has done a study that shows variations in per capita expenditures for Medicare beneficiaries. Thestudy (found at www.dartmouthatlas.org) indicates that Medicare spending per beneficiary throughout almost all of Minnesota, including the Arrowhead region, is significantly lower than in many other regions of the United States. While Medicare costs per beneficiary in portions of the country’s southeast, mid-south, and northeast and in the Chicago area and eastern Michigan average between $9,000 and $16,352, costs throughout almost all of Minnesota average between $5,310 and $7,000.
According to the project’s website, “Research has shown that some of the variation is due to differences in the prices paid for similar services, and some is due to differences in illness; but even after accounting for these factors, twofold differences remain. In other words, the differences in spending are almost entirely explained by differences in the volume of health care services received by similar patients.”
Massa said the Minnesota Hospital Association would like the state’s hospitals to be rewarded for providing high-quality care at low cost. The association is watching numerous payment reforms being considered in the legislature that could impact the state’s hospitals.
Hospital board member Howard Abrahamson asked Massa to comment on the state of nursing care funding. A lot of hospitals, Massa responded, are discontinuing their nursing home care because they “are such a drag” on hospital budgets. Some facilities are laying off employees, offering fewer hours of work, or discontinuing previously offered health care coverage, he said.
In the face of continuing funding challenges, Massa made it clear that he is fiercely advocating for the interests of Minnesota’s hospitals.
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