60 Minutes

As many did, I watched with interest the HMA spot on "60 Minutes" Sunday evening after the close Raven's game. There seemed to be plenty of people with opinions about how HMA operates their business and what they say about admissions.

According to 60 Minutes and other follow up, there is no problem with the health care that was received at HMA facilities by patients. Neither "60 Minutes" nor the physicians interviewed identified any admission decision in which a physician's medical judgment was overridden by an HMA executive, much less to defraud Medicare. The reliance on the comments by former employees was the corpus of the piece.

With the concern of liability on the hospital's part, there should be a tendency to err on the side of the best interest of the patient. In fact, the overall data doesn't appear to reflect that HMA is admitting more patients than its peers, and the data can't really be used to refute individual allegations made by former employees.

As an overview, the larger issue is how our current healthcare system may be moving to the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) connecting health care provider's reimbursements with the total cost of quality and care - with reimbursement being tied to results.

Does this mean that HMA is wrong? Not necessarily- they provide quality care to patients without complaint and seem to be averaging numbers consistent with their peers. In my opinion there were too many open comments being made about a situation when no court has ruled and prior to sworn testimony given.