Hospitals

Southern Regional Health System and Emory Healthcare announced Thursday that they will enter talks on a possible affiliation.

Emory would manage Southern Regional, a Riverdale hospital system, under the proposal.

The announcement of a letter of intent follows initial talks between the two nonprofit organizations reported in March. And it continues the drive for consolidation among hospitals across the state, and especially in the metro Atlanta area.

Earlier this year, Emory completed a partnership with Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta to form a joint operating company. Elsewhere in the state, hospital mergers have occurred in Albany and Valdosta, and the Mayo Clinic recently took control of a health system in Waycross. full story

Georgia’s Medicaid and PeachCare programs are tight on cash.

The cash-flow problem has prompted the Department of Community Health to ask medical providers and insurers to give the agency some flexibility on payments.

The financial situation came up Thursday at a Department of Community Health board meeting. Scott Frederking, the agency’s budget director, said, “We will have little if any reserves at the end of the year.’’

“Day to day, we’re watching our cash,’’ he told the board.

Frederking told GHN later, ‘‘We’re managing the best we can. We will pay our bills.’’

Including federal funds, the state Medicaid and PeachCare budgets total more than $7 billion annually. The state’s fiscal year ends June 30.

The agency is about one month behind in payments to the three care management organizations that oversee care for more than 1 million Medicaid and PeachCare members. The CMOs agreed to the payment lag.

Community Health has also asked hospitals for early delivery of their ‘‘provider tax,’’ a payment that, by increasing federal dollars for the program, helps fund Medicaid and raises reimbursements for providers.

Hospitals are also getting their final payment from the state for the disproportionate share program a little later than normal, said Vince Harris, the agency chief financial officer. The DSH program compensates hospitals that serve a large number of low-income patients.

Hospitals and the CMOs ‘‘have been very cooperative,’’ Frederking told GHN on Thursday. The cash flow ‘‘has been unusually lean this year,’’ he said. full story

The federal government announced Tuesday that 27 health collaboratives –- including two in Georgia — have been picked to participate in a new Medicare program that provides financial incentives for doctors and hospitals to form an “accountable care organization.”

The program is called the Shared Savings Program. If the organizations improve patient care and contain costs, they can share in the savings, getting paid more for keeping their patients healthy and out of the hospital.

Accountable care organizations, or ACOs, are a central feature of the federal health reform law of 2010, also known as the Affordable Care Act. Medical providers will be rewarded based on the quality of care they provide, not the volume of services they deliver, as under the traditional fee-for-service model.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a challenge to the health care law and is expected to rule in June whether the law and the programs it has created remain in effect.

A Kaiser Health News article points out that the announcement on ACOs was the government’s first major health law action since the court held arguments on the law two weeks ago.

The 27 new ACOs will serve an estimated 375,000 beneficiaries in 18 states. The Georgia collaborations are in Athens and Savannah. full story

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, ruled Monday against an Albany accountant in his civil lawsuit over a prosecutorial investigator’s alleged false testimony before a grand jury.

The justices said witnesses who lie to a grand jury are protected from civil lawsuits, giving them the same protection that witnesses get at trials.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing the opinion for the court, said accountant Charles Rehberg’s lawsuit against an investigator for a prosecutor should not go forward. “Grand jury witnesses should enjoy the same immunity as witnesses at trial,” Alito said. “This means that a grand jury witness has absolute immunity.”

Prosecutors are already generally immune from civil lawsuits for anything that relates to a trial, an Associated Press article noted.

The Albany case stemmed from a series of incidents beginning in 2003, when Rehberg and a local physician, Dr. John Bagnato, started sending anonymous faxes to business and political leaders in Albany, criticizing the financial practices of a local hospital, Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital.

The dispute evolved into a bizarre saga that featured a famed trial attorney, a powerful hospital, threats from ex-FBI agents, national media attention and a documentary film. Here’s a GHN article about how the case wound up in the Supreme Court.

Alito, in the 18-page opinion, wrote that without immunity for witnesses, the truth-seeking process would be impaired because people might be reluctant to testify. He added that witnesses’ fear of litigation might deprive grand juries of critical evidence, Reuters reported. full story

The CEO of the Mayo Clinic said Thursday that the Minnesota-based organization, fresh off a merger with a Waycross health system, is looking at establishing other hospital relationships in the region around its Jacksonville, Fla., hub.

Dr. John Noseworthy, president and CEO of the Mayo Clinic, told Georgia Health News in an interview that those alliances could be looser than the merger struck with Satilla Health Services, which is now called Mayo Clinic Health System in Waycross. That deal was announced earlier this month.

Waycross, in the southeast corner of Georgia, is about 75 miles from Jacksonville.

“We’re looking at the market around Jacksonville,’’ Noseworthy said. “The whole region.’’

Some hospitals interested in affiliations are looking to be taken over as owned facilities, while others want to remain more independent, he said. full story