The Globe reports on the loss of data on 66 patients who'd been seen at an infectious-diseases clinic:

According to hospital security reports, a manager in the infectious disease center's billing unit told supervisors that she left the paperwork on a Red Line train the morning of March 9. The manager said she had brought the paperwork home with her to work over the weekend and left the material sometime between 7:30 and 9 a.m. The Transit Police were notified, but the paperwork was not found.

The incident makes Tinker Ready wonder if maybe the T needs a new announcement when a train pulls into a station.

Paul Levy, CEO at Partners HealthCare frenemy Beth Israel Deaconess, reports he dismissed complaints from friends at Norwood Hospital about the MGH/Brigham clinic under construction in Foxboro - until this past Friday, when he gave a speech at a meeting at neighboring Gillette Stadium and was stunned to see how huge the thing is:

... [T]he two facilities are merely 8.5 miles apart, making them indistinguishable to many patients in terms of transportation access. Since insurance companies pay community doctors in the Partners system substantially more than those in the Caritas Christi system, it will be easier to recruit physicians to offer services in Foxboro than in Norwood. Does this difference in reimbursement rates reflect a documented difference in the quality of care between the community-based doctors in the two systems? No.

Now, let's acknowledge that MGH and the Brigham are powerful brands. To the extent patients are influenced by that reputation or other factors to migrate to the PHS facility from Norwood Hospital, the overall health care bill for the state will rise for no documented additional value to those patients or society. ...

Charley on the MTA recommends the Globe's latest story on our own little health-care cartel, and sums up what this and revelations about local doctors pushing pills while getting paid by the drug companies really means:

... Health care costs, particularly in MA, are not just high because of some vague, unknowable "market forces"; it isn't just that the Health Care Invisible Hand mysteriously keeps us all under its thumb, and gosh golly, after all There's Nothing That Can Be Done.

No, it's simpler than that. We're actively, intentionally, unethically and possibly illegally getting screwed.

Paul Levy at Beth Israel Deaconess discusses the full-page ad Brigham and Women's and Mass. General took out in the Globe today to tell us how wonderful they are (no doubt out of a sense of bursting pride, not because of a Globe Spotlight article on how they are using their muscle to boost their reimbursement rates).

The Globe reports part of the reason is doctors and we insist on care at MGH, Brigham and Women's and Children's, not just for fancy-shmancy cases but for everything - and they are so big now they can get away with charging dramatically higher rates than community hospitals and even other teaching hospitals in the region:

... [T]he high-end procedures that make the Brigham and Mass. General so famous are not their bread and butter. Eighty-five percent of the time their doctors are performing the same less glamorous medicine that occupies most other hospitals: delivering babies, repairing hernias, treating pneumonia. ...

The New York Times documents what might be a conflict-of-interest scandal among certain Harvard Medical School psychiatrists, notably one who helped create a huge new market for anti-psychotic drugs in children who somehow managed not to report most of the $1.6 million he got paid by drug companies to university officials.

"On September 7, Rick had a biopsy and it was clear that he had a malignant tumor." In this Flickr set, he photographs his battle - and treatment at Mass. General.

Burrito Blog confirms that Anna's Taqueria is opening at Mass. General Hospital.