News in brief - Jan. 17, 2011

Delaware presses for more details on Blues deal

Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden has asked Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware for more information about its proposed affiliation with the much larger Pennsylvania Blues plan Highmark.

Delaware Blues officials said the affiliation will allow it to make needed investments in technology that require significant capital, and both companies promised efficiencies of scale as a result of the affiliation.

The pending affiliation, which the two plans announced in August 2010, is subject to approval or denial by the insurance commissioner's office, but the attorney general contends that he has the authority to review it as part of his oversight of nonprofit entities.

"We will ensure that all the necessary questions are asked and answered before this transaction proceeds," Biden said in a news release.

Among other things in his Jan. 4 letter, Biden asked for more details about what will happen to the Blues' financial reserves and whether Highmark might move jobs out of Delaware.

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Europe and U.S. collaborate on health IT

The United States and Europe have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together to form internationally recognized interoperabilty standards for electronic medical record systems.

The memorandum, signed by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda, formalizes plans to jointly develop strategies for expanding and training a skilled health IT work force. The agreement is expected to boost the potential for U.S. vendors to market to European companies, and vice versa.

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Study: Family medicine visits more complex than psychiatry, cardiology

Outpatient visits to family physicians have a greater complexity than those to cardiologists and psychiatrists, according to a study in the January/February issue of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

Researchers with the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio analyzed data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. Differences in complexity were minimal for total encounters and without adjustment for visit duration. When time was taken into account, the complexity of care provided per hour by a general practice or family physician was 33% greater than by a cardiologist. The number was 500% when family physicians were compared with psychiatrists.

The authors suggest that complexity may be a factor in lower rates of completion of quality of care measurements by family physicians.

The study is available online (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21209339)

This content was published online only.

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