Using evidence that was sealed from public view during a federal trial against St. Luke’s Health System, the Idaho Statesman’s series examined what goes into the business decisions made by Idaho’s largest and most powerful health care organizations. The stories illustrates how local hospitals make investments based on what competitors are doing in markets such as maternity care, and how they push doctors to keep patients/referrals inside of their own systems.
The series digs into the power struggles and financial hostage-taking that occurs when Idaho insurers and hospitals negotiate prices, which ultimately shapes how much Idaho consumers pay for health care. The Statesman also reported how the buyout tore apart what had been Idaho’s largest multispecialty practice and cost St. Luke’s tens of millions of dollars. The series revealed among other facts that a Statesman employee’s own medical costs spiked 490 percent after her doctor joined St. Luke’s — and when that patient complained, executives internally bemoaned the fact that she understood what caused the price increase and mulled whether to write off the charges. Finally, we noted that much of the trade-secret information was anything but. One sealed document, for example, was a Medicare Cost Report, which I easily obtained through FOIA and then asked the attorney to justify his affidavit swearing that the document contained trade secrets.