Financially Challenged But Fierce, Griffin Hospital Innovates Its Way Through Pandemic

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Sweating in his black jacket under a brilliant spring sun, Keith J. DuPerry, 40, waited in line on the New Haven Green. Destination: FEMA’s first-in-the-nation COVID-19 mass vaccination trailer, administered by Griffin Hospital of Derby. Earlier that morning, DuPerry had taken a bus from the sober house where he lives to an addiction treatment center downtown. The buzz of activity on the Green—party tents and comfortable seating, trailers custom shrink-wrapped with photos of smiling, diverse, shot-giving caregivers and grateful patients—got him thinking. He returned to the Green after lunch.

Disparities

Forum Tackles High Cost Of Health Care, Need For Transparency

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What if you needed a hip replacement and could click through a list of area hospitals to compare costs and outcomes for the procedure? That kind of transparency of information might go a long way towards improving quality of care and lowering costs, a panel of experts suggested Monday at a forum on health care costs convened by the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut. “I look at the variance in some of the costs, when we’ve got three or four times the variance in cost for a hip (replacement), for the same hardware . . .

Disparities

Public Forum Will Delve Into High Costs Of Health Care

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With health care in the headlines, the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut is hosting a public forum Monday at Quinnipiac University’s North Haven campus that will feature a panel of experts weighing in on the high costs of health care. The forum, “Drowning in Health Care Costs: All Hands on Deck,” features prominent author Steven Brill, whose 36-page cover story in Time magazine in February 2013 delved into the arbitrary and largely hidden system of hospital pricing. Brill will be joined by Patrick Charmel, president and CEO of Griffin Hospital in Derby, and Kevin Lembo, state comptroller. Journalist Susan Campbell, a contributor to the Connecticut Health I-Team, will moderate the discussion. The event is the first in a series of forums planned by the foundation and its parent organization, the Connecticut Health Advancement and Research Trust (CHART), to discuss health care challenges facing the state.