Paduda: Staff’ Comp Is Nonetheless Within the Darkish Ages| Staff Compensation Information

By Joe Paduda

Friday, February 5, 2021 | 79 | 0 | min read

With extremely rare exceptions, employee payers – and PPO networks – do next to nothing for quality.

Joe Paduda

Let’s compare two hospitals near Jacksonville, Florida. Baptist Medical uses publicly available free data (thanks to Rand) and is pretty good. The CMS Hospital Star Compare rating system, the most widely used quality rating metric, has four stars out of five.

Above the bridge is an HCA facility, the Orange Park Medical Center, with two stars that are below average by CMS standards.

Both facilities are in multi-employee PPOs, neither of which indicates the large quality gap between the two. Or other quality measures for other institutions.

There is also a difference in cost. And no, you don’t get what you pay for.

The higher-rated facility costs less: Baptist receives about 2.6 times the Medicare rate for care provided by private insurers; Orange Park is four times Medicare.

what does that mean to you?

Would you like to show that you care about the quality of care for injured workers? Send them to good institutions.

Joseph Paduda is a co-owner of CompPharma, a consulting firm focused on improving pharmacy programs in employee compensation. This column is republished from his Managed Care Matters blog with his permission.