Humana Inc. to Release Third Quarter 2013 Results on November 6, 2013

LOUISVILLE, KY. — Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) will release its financial results for the third quarter 2013 (3Q13) on Wednesday, November 6, 2013 at 6:00 a.m. eastern time. The company will host a conference call, as well as a virtual slide presentation at 9:00 a.m. eastern time that same morning to discuss its financial results for the quarter and earnings guidance for 2013 and 2014.

The live virtual presentation (audio with slides) of the 3Q13 earnings call may be accessed via Humana’s Investor Relations page at www.humana.com. The company suggests web participants sign on approximately 15 minutes in advance of the call. The company also suggests web participants visit the site well in advance of the call to run a system test and to download any free software needed to view the presentation.

All parties interested in the audio only portion of the call are invited to dial 888-625-7430. No password is required. The company suggests participants dial in at least ten minutes in advance of the call.

For those unable to participate in the live event, the virtual presentation archive will be available in the Presentations section of the Investor Relations page at www.humana.com, approximately two hours following the live webcast. Telephone replays will be available from 12:00 p.m. eastern time on November 6, 2013 until midnight eastern time on November 9, 2013 and can be accessed by dialing 855-859-2056 and providing the conference ID # 14885162.

The company’s 3Q13 earnings news release may include financial measures that are not in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”). If so, a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to financial results under GAAP, as well as management’s reasons for including non-GAAP financial measures, will be included in the company’s 3Q13 earnings news release, a copy of which will be available on the Investor Relations page of www.humana.com on November 6, 2013.

Humana Inc., headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, is a leading health care company that offers a wide range of insurance products and health and wellness services that incorporate an integrated approach to lifelong well-being. By leveraging the strengths of its core businesses, Humana believes it can better explore opportunities for existing and emerging adjacencies in health care that can further enhance wellness opportunities for the millions of people across the nation with whom the company has relationships.

More information regarding Humana is available to investors via the Investor Relations page of the company’s web site at www.humana.com, including copies of:

• Annual reports to stockholders;
• Securities and Exchange Commission filings;
• Most recent investor conference presentations;
• Quarterly earnings news releases;
• Replays of most recent earnings release conference calls;
• Calendar of events (including upcoming earnings conference call dates and times, as well as planned interaction with research analysts and institutional investors);
• Corporate Governance information
  
  Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2013/09/26/5249111/humana-inc-to-release-third-quarter.html#storylink=cpy

How To Turn Corporations Into Innovation Machines

• Steve Blank is a contributing author on Forbes.com.

The corporate graveyard fills up quickly these days. Blackberry,Newsweek, Kodak, Blockbuster, Dell…once storied brands now routinely sell for a fraction of their heyday value. Steve Blank, four-time entrepreneur and author of The Four Steps To The Epiphany, argues that companies should get used to the churn.

“Companies in the 21st century are facing continuous disruption,” he says. “The 20th century rules don’t apply anymore.”

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Known for developing the practice of customer development, the act of actually figuring out what customers want before developing a product, Blank’s ideas now guide startup founders around the world. (The practice was popularized by Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup.) Since publishing Four Steps in 2003 he’s gone on to help teams funded by the National Science Foundation commercialize their research. Next in his sights: corporations.

In an interview filmed last month, Blank told FORBES that large companies might place nominal value in the idea of “innovation”—reflected by new positions like Chief Innovation Officer and VP of Innovation—but most have no idea how to consistently execute on new ideas. “Rather than understanding that this is a systemic problem common among all corporations, every company is trying to solve it tactically themselves,” Blank says.

But tacking another division onto an already broken structure won’t change things, he argues. “The internet has changed the world completely. The cycle times of large corporations for innovation means our existing structures—P&L business units, advanced R&D in a corner over here, M&A over here, VC group over here—that stuff doesn’t work anymore.”

Instead, Blank favors a more radical rethinking of corporate structure: “The solution is actually blowing up the architecture completely and figuring out how to make continuous innovation an integral part of the organization.”

The threat doesn’t just apply to technology companies, he argues. Exxon, for example, was taken off-guard by the natural gas boom, paying dearly with its rocky $41 billion acquisition of natural gas giant XTO. Incumbent car companies face pressure from upstarts like Tesla while retail giants like Sears, Barnes & Noble and JCPenney have seen their top lines deteriorate as e-commerce grows.

Yet some companies–Amazon, Apple and Google come to mind–seem to innovate effortlessly. “What we really need to do,” Blank says, “is take those best practices and make them a common corporate type.” This is exactly what he intends to do over the next year. Joining him in the effort will be Henry Chesborough of Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and Alexander Osterwalder, developer of the business model canvas.

Blank envisions a future where companies publicly choose one of two paths. One group will opt for maximizing short-term profits and dividends in lieu of long-term sustainability. Others, like Amazon, will maintain slimmer margins to innovate and survive over decades. Wall Street, in turn, will have to judge companies differently according to their declared major.

Will corporate America actually listen to Blank’s theories? “I think it’s going to be like the Lean Startup movement,” he told me in an interview last May. “I was writing for a decade and all of a sudden it’s here.”

Follow me @JJColao and on Facebook.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2013/09/26/how-to-turn-corporations-into-innovation-machines/

Fax Sent to Wrong Number Results in HIPAA Violation

Fax Sent to Wrong Number Results in HIPAA Violation

Dr. G, 58, was a urologist with a solo practice. His business was thriving, and he employed both a nurse and an office manager to help him.

One morning, the office manager got a call from one of the practice's patients, Mr. M, a 52-year-old, HIV-positive man who had been seeing Dr. G for a decade. Although he was happy with the treatment he had been receiving, Mr. M's company was promoting him and he was relocating to another town. He called to ask Dr. G to fax his medical records to his new urologist.

The office manager was juggling numerous tasks, but managed to send the fax out later that day. The office did not have personalized fax cover sheets, just sheets that the office manager printed off once a week which had spaces to fill in the “to” and “from” sections. She hurriedly filled them in and shot off the fax, one of several she had to do before checking in the next patient.

At the end of the day she told Dr. G that it had been done. He thought nothing of it until the following Monday when the office manager came into the back office to speak to him. She was pale and looked shaken, and the physician immediately asked if she was okay.

“It's Mr. M,” the office manager said. “He just called – absolutely furious. He says that we faxed his medical records to his employer rather than his new doctor, and that now his company is aware of his HIV status. He is extremely upset.”

“I'm so sorry,” the office manager said tearfully. “I was the one who sent that fax out. I must have accidentally grabbed the wrong number from his file. What should we do?” She looked at Dr. G for guidance.

Dr. G was holding his forehead, and trying to figure out how to remedy the situation. “The first thing we're going to do is to call Mr. M and apologize. Then we'll take it from there.”

The office manager and Dr. G called Mr. M and apologized profusely for the mix-up. Mr. M understood that it had not been done maliciously, but he was still not satisfied and reported the incident to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR). 

An initial investigation indicated that the incident was not criminal and so it was not referred to the Department of Justice. Rather, it was handled by the OCR. OCR officials appeared at Dr. G's office to look into the matter, and after a thorough investigation, the OCR issued a letter of warning to the office manager, referred the office staff for HIPAA privacy training, and had the office revise the fax cover sheets to underscore that they contain a confidential communication for the intended recipient only.

Legal Background

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, commonly known as HIPAA, protects personally identifiable health information of patients, and specifies to providers how such information may be used. HIPAA has been in effect for about a decade, and in that time, the HHS has received a total of almost 80,000 complaints.

Of those, more than 44,000 were dismissed, 19,000 were investigated and resolved with changes to privacy practice, and 9,000 were investigated but no violations were found. 

According to HHS, private medical practices were the ones most often required to take corrective action as a result of enforcement. The top two compliance issues most frequently investigated are impermissible use and disclosure of protected health information and lack of safeguards for protected health information.

When a HIPAA complaint is filed with the HHS, the first determination made is whether there was a possible privacy violation and whether it was of a criminal nature. If it was determined to be criminal, the case is referred to the Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution. If it was determined that it was not a criminal issue (as in this case) the violation is investigated by the OCR. 

If it is determined that a HIPAA violation did, in fact, take place, the OCR can either obtain voluntary compliance, corrective action or some other voluntary agreement with the offender, or the OCR can issue a formal finding of violation and force the offender to change its practices.

In this particular case, the office manager and Dr. G recognized the mistake and immediately tried to take corrective action by apologizing to the patient. Dr. G's office also voluntarily agreed to extra compliance training for the staff and to a change in their faxing procedures to indicate that the faxed materials are confidential.

Protecting Yourself

This particular scenario was the result of a careless error. While a careless error can happen to anyone, one such as this could cause irreparable harm to the patient if his employer now views or treats him differently because of the new knowledge of his HIV-positive status.

Confidential patient records must be treated with the greatest of care as they contain information of an extremely personal nature. Many HIPAA cases have involved the unintentional divulging of the HIV or AIDS status of a patient. 

In a similar case, a dental practice was reported for using red stickers and the word AIDS on the outside of patient folders. And in a case that took place in a hospital, a nurse and orderly lost their jobs for discussing a patient's HIV status within earshot of other patients.

A good rule of thumb is to treat a patient's confidential information as you would want yours to be treated, and then add a little extra security for good measure.

This article originally appeared on RUN.

http://www.empr.com/fax-sent-to-wrong-number-results-in-hipaa-violation/article/310698/1/

JAMA: Researchers observed a 19.2% drop in AMI hospitalizations, but 16.5% increase in expenses

"The researchers observed a 19.2% decrease in the rate of AMI hospitalizations, but overall per-patient expenditures increased by 16.5%. About one-quarter (25.6%) of the total risk-adjusted increase in expenditures occurred within 30 days, and 74.4% occurred 31–365 days after the index admission. There were increases in spending per beneficiary within 30 days (7.5% increase; $1,560) and between 31 and 365 days (28% increase; $4,535). From 31–365 days after admission, the expenditures for skilled nursing facilities, hospice, home health agencies, durable medical equipment, and outpatient care almost doubled."

Importance 

 Medicare expenditures continue to grow rapidly, but the reasons are uncertain.

Objective 

 To compare expenditures from 1998 through 1999 and 2008 for Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction (AMI).

Design, Setting, and Participants  Cross-sectional analysis of a random 20% sample of fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries admitted with AMI from 1998 through 1999 (n = 105 074) and a 100% sample for 2008 (n = 212 329).

Main Outcomes and Measures  

Per-beneficiary expenditures, standardized for price and adjusted for risk and inflation. Expenditures were measured across 4 periods: overall (index admission to 1 year), index (within the index admission), early (postindex admission to 30 days), and late (31-365 days).

Results  

Compared with the subjects from 1998 through 1999, those in 2008 were older and had more comorbidities but slightly less ischemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease. Although there was a 19.2% decline in the rate of hospitalizations for AMI, overall expenditures per patient increased by 16.5% (absolute difference, $6094). Of the total risk-adjusted increase in expenditures, 25.6% occurred within 30 days (22.0% attributed to the index admission), and 74.4% happened 31 to 365 days after the index admission. Spending per beneficiary within 30 days increased by $1560 (7.5%), and spending between 31 and 365 days increased by $4535 (28.0%). Expenditures for skilled nursing facilities, hospice, home health agency, durable medical equipment, and outpatient care nearly doubled 31 to 365 days after admission. Mortality within 1 year declined from 36.0% in 1998 through 1999 to 31.7% in 2008; of the decline, 3.3% was in the 30 days following admission, and 1.0% was in days 31 to 365.

Conclusions and Relevance  Between 1998 and 2008, Medicare expenditures per patient with an AMI substantially increased, with about three-fourths of the increase in expenditures occurring 31 to 365 days after the date of hospital admission. Although current bundled payment models may contain expenditures within 30 days of an AMI, they do not contain spending beyond 30 days.

Between 2000 and 2010, the growth in Medicare expenditures per enrollee, without adjusting for inflation, was about 5.9% annually, considerably greater than the 2.8% annual growth in gross domestic product.1- 2 Given the large budget deficits in the United States and the high cost of caring for Medicare beneficiaries, unanswered questions remain: why have Medicare costs been rising so rapidly? Do reimbursement rates, or the mix of services per disease, account for increased expenditures? Alternatively, has the threshold for treatment decreased so that patients are treated more aggressively?

We addressed these questions with detailed Medicare claims data and focused on a well-defined index event: hospital admission for acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Patients with AMI are almost universally hospitalized (making this a reliable index event). The considerable technological progress in the treatment of AMI has improved survival rates.3 For the index admission, our hypothesis was that changes in both the technology of treatment and reimbursement rates led to increased costs. For the acute (within 30 days of the AMI) and longer-term (31-365 days) postadmission periods, our hypothesis was that treatment intensity increased for patients after their initial hospitalization.

Data

We used a random 20% sample of Medicare beneficiaries from 1998 through 1999 and a 100% sample for 2008. Eligible patients were fee-for-service Medicare enrollees with the diagnosis of AMI based on the presence of appropriate diagnosis codes from the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (410.xx [except 410.x2]), from 1998 through 1999 or 2008. Eligibility in the sample was limited to those (1) enrolled in Medicare (Part A and B, as identified through the Medicare denominator file) for the entire year beyond their index admission (or until the month of their death), (2) at least 65 years or older at the time of their index admission, and (3) enrolled in a non–health maintenance organization plan for more than 1 month during each of the 12-month periods (eFigure in the Supplement). Data from the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review files were linked to other Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services files (Carrier file, Home Health Agency, Durable Medical Equipment, Outpatient, and Hospice) containing claims that represented services associated with the patient’s index admission and subsequent services (and expenditures) for a 1-year period following admission. Outpatient claims differ from physician claims; they include bills from rehabilitation facilities, hospital outpatient departments, and other institutional outpatient providers.

We excluded patients admitted to a non–acute care hospital with a primary diagnosis of AMI, those transferred to an acute care hospital with a primary diagnosis other than AMI, and those discharged alive with a total length of stay less than 1 day and who were not transferred. These exclusions left a total of 317 403 patients in our final sample (eFigure in the Supplement).

We defined a transfer as occurring if the date of discharge was the same as the date of admission between 2 mutually exclusive hospitals. The total length of stay for the index admission was defined from the date of admission to discharge, including any transfers.

Calculation of Expenditures

We report price-standardized Medicare payments for the index admission and postindex use up to 1 year following a patient’s hospitalization for AMI.4 Standardized Medicare payments adjust for differences across regions in reimbursement rates for Medicare services owing to costs of living, graduate medical education, and payments provided for serving a disproportionate number of low-income patients.

Hospital Payments

Hospital payments included the acute index hospitalization (diagnostic-related group [DRG] payment plus outlier payments when present) and other hospitalizations occurring within 1 year of the initial admission date. Expenditures included actual payments to providers but not amounts billed to patients or their supplemental insurance policies.

We disaggregated expenditures after the index admission into the specific categories of hospital use and accounted for changes in definitions of DRGs over time, including the (new) Medicare Severity–Diagnosis-Related Group (MS-DRG) categories (eTables 1 and 2 in the Supplement). Because of the difficulty of risk-adjusting each specific DRG/MS-DRG category in every period, we present unadjusted expenditures.

Physician Payments and Use

We provide use of and payments for physician services based on current procedural terminology and the Berenson-Eggers type of service codes.5 The Berenson-Eggers codes create clinically relevant service categories for analyzing Medicare expenditures.

Other Expenditures After the Index Hospitalization

We included expenditures for skilled nursing facilities, outpatient facilities, home health agency, hospice, and durable medical equipment.

Statistical Analysis

We calculated the population-based rates of AMI hospitalizations and total expenditures (index and postindex admission) for all fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries. The 1998 through 1999 expenditures are expressed in terms of 2008 US dollars after adjustment for general inflation using the chain-weighted gross domestic product price deflator. We adjusted for age, sex, race, ST-segment AMI, and Charlson comorbidities (including 13 comorbid conditions previously predictive of long-term mortality).6 We used 2-sample t tests (for unequal sample sizes and unequal variances across periods). Although our study was not designed to test the causal effect of greater spending levels on health outcomes, we used a similar risk adjustment approach to compare 30-day rates from 1998 through 1999 with corresponding 31- to 365-day case fatality rates in 2008.

We identified 317 403 Medicare beneficiaries who were hospitalized for an AMI (105 074 from the 20% sample of enrollees in 1998-1999 and 212 329 from the 100% sample in 2008). These comprised 0.64% of all fee-for-service Medicare enrollees from 1998 through 1999 and 0.47% in 2008 (P < .001). Thus, there was a 19.2% decline in the incidence of AMI during the decade.

As shown in Table 1, patients in 2008 were older and sicker on average than patients in 1998 through 1999 and had more comorbid conditions, exclusive of less ischemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease (all P < .001). There was a shift from coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery during the index admission to percutaneous coronary intervention. Median length of stay was 1 day shorter in 2008 (5 vs 6 days in 1998-1999, P < .001). Reductions in length of stay were associated with concomitant increases in other expenditures, including a 75.4% increase in the use of skilled nursing facilities in the first 30 days (Table 2).

Overall, 1-year case fatality rates per patient with AMI declined from 36.0% from 1998 through 1999 to 31.7% in 2008; of the 4.3% decline, 3.3% was in the 30 days following admission (from 18.6% to 15.3%) and 1.0% was in days 31 to 365. The case fatality rate for days 31 to 365 (among patients surviving for 30 days after an AMI) declined from 22.3% to 20.2%. The available data did not allow us to measure changes in quality of life.

Adjusted 1-year expenditures increased 16.5% (absolute difference, $6094) for 1998 through 1999 compared with 2008 (Table 2). Spending per beneficiary within 30 days increased by $1560 (7.5%), and spending between 31 and 365 days increased by $4535 (28.0%). Medicare expenditures in the first 30 days accounted for 25.6% of the increase in spending (22.0% attributed to the index admission); expenditures between 31 and 365 days after admission accounted for the remaining 74.4%. The components of the 74.4% increase between 31 and 365 days were home health agency, hospice, or durable medical equipment (22.9%); skilled nursing facilities (17.3%); inpatient (12.8%) and outpatient (11.1%) services; and physician payment (10.4%).

Table 2.  Total, Index, and Postindex Admission Spending for Patients Admitted for Acute Myocardial Infarctiona

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Together, inpatient and skilled nursing facility spending accounted for the greatest absolute change in cost (total of $3033) during 1 year (Table 2) and the greatest proportion of the overall cost increase (48.8%). Growth in home health agency and hospice expenditures was not associated with declines in inpatient facility expenditures.

From 1998 through 1999, 33.9% of the cohort was rehospitalized within 3 months of the index admission (20.0% within 1 month) compared with 33.4% within 3 months in 2008 (19.8% within 1 month). Although overall rates of readmission did not change appreciably, the mean cost per readmission increased by 9.8% ($8991 in 1998-1999 to $9874 in 2008).

The greatest absolute increases (from 1998-1999 to 2008) in hospital facility expenditures during 1 year per patient with AMI were for percutaneous coronary intervention ($571) and cardiac defibrillator implantation ($541), the latter a technology not reimbursed by Medicare for coronary artery disease from 1998 through 1999 (Figure 1). Unadjusted expenditures for cardiac defibrillator implantation, rehabilitation, or septicemia accounted for 47.1% of the increase in hospitalization costs after the index admission.

Physician expenditures per beneficiary decreased by 1.0% during the index admission and were unchanged within the first 30 days (Table 2). Between 31 and 365 days, physician expenditures increased by $632 (21.8%), primarily because of a 43.5% increase in outpatient physician spending (Table 2). The greatest per-beneficiary increase in expenditures after the index admission, $498, was for durable medical equipment or “other services or exceptions,” such as ambulance transport and chiropractic care (Table 3). Expenditures in this category increased from $602 in 1998 through 1999 to $1100 in 2008.

Table 3.  Rates and Expenditures for Physician and Other Servicesa in 1998 Through 1999 and 2008 After the Index Admission for Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI)b

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Physician expenditures for cardiac procedures after the index hospitalization declined from $1120 per patient from 1998 through 1999 to $803 in 2008, or by 28.3% (Table 3). The rate of rehospitalizations for percutaneous coronary interventions increased from 1.7 per 100 patients with AMI from 1998 through 1999 to 5.4 in 2008 (Figure 2). However, the rehospitalization rate for CABG surgery declined from 3.1 per 100 patients with AMI from 1998 through 1999 to 1.4 in 2008, or by 54.8%. Medicare’s cost per patient during 1 year for those undergoing inpatient percutaneous coronary interventions, with adjustment for inflation but not risk, was $12 327 from 1998 through 1999 and $14 385 in 2008, a 16.7% increase. Medicare’s cost per patient during 1 year for rehospitalizations in which a CABG was performed, with adjustment for inflation but not risk, was $31 727 from 1998 through 1999 and $30 686 in 2008. For both percutaneous coronary interventions and the rehospitalizations for CABG, the figures for cost per patient include the instances when a patient had more than 1 percutaneous coronary intervention or more than 1 rehospitalization for CABG within the year; the figures are not per percutaneous coronary intervention or per rehospitalization for CABG.

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1740698#ioi130100t2