By the Numbers

 

1,000 — United Outstanding Physicians LLC (UOP) (Dearborn, MI), a physician organization with more than 1,000 physicians, launched an accountable care organization (ACO), according to a Crain’s Detroit Business report. The ACO designated 1,020 shares of stock to 720 physicians. 60,000 other shares remain available and will either be retained by the company or made available to new physicians, according to the report. The organization approached several local health systems to provide inpatient care for patients assigned to its ACO, including Oakwood Healthcare (Dearborn, MI), Saint Mary Mercy (Livonia, MI), Garden City Hospital (Garden City, MI), Detroit Medical Center (Detroit, MI) and Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital (Wyandotte, MI).

3 – Three Boston area hospitals are ramping up training efforts that will allow employees in lower-skilled jobs to move up the career ladder and fill these positions, according to the Boston Globe. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Medical Center, and Partners HealthCare (owner of Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General hospitals) each got about $500,000, allowing them to ramp up training efforts for low-skilled, low-income workers — many of whom have high school educations. In exchange, the hospitals promised to keep their programs alive for another three years, and have committed millions of their own money to do so.

$250 million – The healthcare reform law passed last year included $250 million over five years in demonstration grants to states to develop and implement alternatives for current medical liability reform. The president’s budget request, detailed last Monday , asks for $100 million to kick start the demonstration grants in fiscal 2012, followed by $50 million for each fiscal year through 2015.

5,156 – Tweets examined in a new study on social media use from physicians. report from the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences says there’s a need for stronger guidelines in the profession on the use of social media sites. Some physicians, it says, are regularly broadcasting private patent information, racist opinions and dodgy claims about medical product.