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Last week Blue Cross announced their plan for employers to encourage the use of those on the “low” list versus the “high” group and as you can see from the link below there are 15 on the “high” list to where it will cost the patient more and will have higher premiums.  This agreement is at the hospital level with insurers.

Blue Cross Launching New Health Coverage Option in Massachusetts-Encourages Consumers Via Employer Plans to Avoid 15 Named High Cost Hospitals

“Alternative Quality Contract” is what is being introduced here with Blue Cross and the physician’s group, giving doctors a budget of sorts to work with and when reconciling if they stay under budget, the physicians group keeps the change and splits with Blue Cross and the same is said for the over budget provisions, they both split the cost.  The article says doctors are a little nervous, and who isn’t these days with a new process being tried as sometimes you never know who it will work until everything is played out.  It may mean some adjustments in billing but I believe that is more over at the insurer’s side.  This appears to be solely between the insurance company and the physician’s group.  You can also read more over at Paul Levy’s blog, “Running a Hospital” for more details and information.  BD

BOSTON — If you feel the earth shaking near Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in the next few months, it may be the rumble of 1,800 physicians adjusting to a new way to deliver and get paid for care. These doctors are the latest and largest physicians group to sign a global budget contract for HMO patients at Blue Cross — and many are uneasy.

“There’s guarded optimism, there’s outright anxiety, there’s everything in between,” said Rich Parker, medical director at the Beth Israel Deaconess Physician Organization.

Now, instead of getting paid for every visit, test and procedure, doctors at Beth Israel will receive a budget to care for their 75,000 to 80,000 Blue Cross HMO patients. If the physicians group goes over-budget they split the loss with Blue Cross. If they come in under budget, they share the surplus, based on how much they improved the care of patients with say, high blood pressure, cholesterol or diabetes. If the doctors can’t show improvement in patients’ conditions or that patients are getting more preventative tests, they don’t share the surplus.

There will be both health and financial incentives to keep patients at Beth Israel Deaconess. If patients go to some other hospital, these doctors would have to pay the rival hospital’s bill and may not have easy access to their patients’ records.  Both Beth Israel and Blue Cross say the contract will save money over time but they are not sharing details.  Primary care doctors will take the lead in managing a patient’s care under this contract — and that’s where another major change comes in.

Beth Israel Doctors Take Risk For Managing Care | WBUR

Read More: http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2010/12/beth-israel-physicians-group-moving.html

I don’t know if we will get to hear additional information on this case but the jury found Sergey Aleynikov of stealing algorithmic computer code on his last day of employment before going to another firm.  He did find a way to get the small sized file on the last day of work, which if someone knows they are going to leave I would think they would not wait until the last day but who knows.

Goldman Code-Theft Trial Begins–Did The Stolen Code Have The Potential to Create Algorithms for High Frequency Trading

When I read the part about only transferring less than 32 megabytes, just common sense would tell me this is indeed only a portion of what would be required, however it could be a module that could be used elsewhere, as I used modules written by others in some of my projects, which by itself was pretty useless as it only did one or two things, and of course a full program like an EMR needs lots of modules and SQL (structured query language) statements.  On the other hand too, I could see a programmer accidentally scooping up some code accidentally if multi-tasking with other items on the computer he’s working on. 

A jury has found a former Goldman Sachs computer programmer guilty of stealing source code from the bank’s high-frequency trading platform.  Part of the argument was that the code was open source and if that was the case why didn’t he get it somewhere else where open source code is usually open and available?

It is strange that he had the code with him on his computer though so there must have been some value, and perhaps the code had been modified from it’s original source too.  I do hope we hear more about this case from the technology side and how it was proven that there was code stolen that had value and was a module  that was used for high frequency trading.  The circumstances of the code being found with him somewhat leads one to believe there was some value to it other than just being free and open source code/algorithms.  BD

The trial of Sergey Aleynikov, a 40-year-old Russian immigrant, spotlighted the world of high-frequency trading, which uses complex computer algorithms to make rapid-fire trades to exploit tiny price discrepancies. High-frequency trading has become a growing important source of revenue at Wall Street firms. As a result, banks fiercely protect the code underpinning their businesses.

Sergey Aleynikov Guilt of Stealing Goldman Trading Code - NYTimes.com

Read More: http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2010/12/sergey-aleynikov-found-guilty-of.html