Hospital accepts loss for improving heart attack care:
St. Francis Hospital officials have found that improving care and cutting costs to treat heart attack patients comes at an unexpected price. A new program cut the hospital’s time to treat patients and reduced the size of the heart attack-saving $9,400 per admission. But reimbursement by insurance companies dropped $9,715, resulting in the hospital losing $315 per admission. “The pay for quality and pay for performance issue under the current reimbursement structure is not designed to reward quality of care,”…