Week 5 DQ1

You are a hospital administrator, and you receive a call from a colleague at another hospital. Your colleague, who is a friend, informs you that he has received a demand for a stipend from the ophthalmologists who take ED calls at his hospital, and they want a sizeable raise. He asks you what you pay for that type of call, and suggests that you could both benefit by coming up with a standard rate of pay over which neither of you will go in response to physician demands. It could save your hospitals $300,000 to do this. What is your response, and what is the rationale for it?

Week 5 DQ2

Do you think that hospitals who engage in group purchasing organizations are engaging in a form of price-fixing? If yes, then why? If no, then why not?