“Per Se” Illegal Under The FTCs’ Analysis.

A physician-hospital organization (PHO) consists of 15 hospitals – with 2,247 staffed beds – and approximately 500 physicians. The PHO operates in a very large section of south Georgia, including the cities of Valdosta, Tifton, Thomasville, Moultrie, and Waycross. The PHOs’ physician members represent approximately 90 percent of all physicians practicing in the region.

The PHO served as a vehicle through which competing hospitals and physicians could bargain collectively with health plans to obtain higher fees for themselves. The owner PHOs, member hospitals, and member physicians canceled contracts with payors and informed them that the PHO would be the sole entity through which they would enter into payor contracts. To contract with the PHO, payors allegedly have had to accept the fixed physician fee schedule and fixed discount of no more than 10 percent off hospital list prices.

1. Explain why this arrangement would be found “per se” illegal under the FTCs’ analysis.
2. What kind of actions could be taken to restructure this arrangement to avoid a determination that it is per se illegal?
3. Discuss the alternate FTC analysis that is applied to such cases if they are suspect but not found to be per se illegal.

1. Limit your responses to a maximum of three pages, not including title and reference pages.
2. Be sure to utilize at least 3-4 scholarly references to support your discussions.
3. Be sure to properly cite your references within the text of your assignment and listed at the end.

“Per Se” Illegal Under The FTCs’ Analysis.

Knowledge Translation

Research utilization and EBP involve activities that can be undertaken at the level of individual nurses or at a higher organizational level (e.g., by nurse administrators), as we describe later in this chapter. In the early part of this century, a related movement emerged that mainly concerns system-level efforts to bridge the gap between knowledge generation and use.  Knowledge translation (KT)  is a term that is often associated with efforts to enhance systematic change in clinical practice.

It appears that the term was coined by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in 2000. CIHR defined KT as “the exchange, synthesis, and ethically-sound application of knowledge—within a complex system of interactions among researchers and users—to accelerate the capture of the benefits of research for Canadians through improved health, more effective services and products, and a strengthened health care system” (CIHR, 2004, p. 4).