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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
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State
Rep. Phyllis Mundy |
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Mundy introduces health-care cost control measures
HARRISBURG, Feb. 3 – In an effort to hold down health-care costs in the Commonwealth, state Rep. Phyllis Mundy, chairman of the House Aging and Older Adult Services Committee, today reintroduced two bills that seek to reinstate a certificate-of-need program in Pennsylvania and prevent medical errors.
The first proposal, (H.B. 247), would rein in what Mundy called a "technological arms race" in Pennsylvania health care by reinstating the state's certificate-of-need program, which expired in 1996. The law required hospitals and non-hospital health-care facilities to justify the purchase of expensive technology or specialized services and to prove they would provide needed services to the communities in which they operate.
Mundy said without a certificate-of-need program, expensive high-tech imaging equipment, physician-owned surgical facilities and other medical technology is often overused, resulting in the unnecessary duplication of costly services.
"On average, MRI units cost $2 million to buy and $800,000 per year to run. When a physician buys one of these expensive pieces of equipment for his or her own office, as many are doing now, there is likely to be pressure to use it," Mundy said. "Self-referring physicians order two to eight times as many scans as other doctors.
"There is a saying, ‘If you build it, they will come.’ But at what cost?" Mundy said. "The number of MRI units and ambulatory surgical facilities owned by physicians in Pennsylvania is growing by leaps and bounds.
"Hospitals within a few miles of each other feel compelled to compete with duplicate high-tech equipment and services regardless of the need for those services in a region. And badly needed services that are less lucrative are not provided in the same region. This impacts the efficiency, quality and cost of health care and does not serve our communities well," she said.
The Luzerne County lawmaker also reintroduced H.B. 246, which would provide incentives for health-care providers to implement total quality management systems.
Mundy said the purpose of the legislation is three-fold: to protect patients from preventable medical errors; to reduce health-care costs; and to lower medical malpractice insurance premiums by offering a 20 percent discount to providers instituting TQM systems approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 2 million Americans suffer annually from hospital-acquired infections, resulting in 99,000 deaths and $20 billion in health-care costs. Mundy said medical errors are not currently recognized as a cause of death by the CDCP but would rank as the fifth-leading cause of death in the United States if they were.
"Preventable medical errors continue to plague our health-care system, and we should be looking into ways to drastically reduce their occurrence," Mundy said. "TQM systems have been successfully implemented for years in private industry and are becoming more widely used in the health-care field. It is time the Commonwealth recognizes the benefits to be gained by implementing these practices in health care."