After performing a July cataract surgery on a veteran participating in the VA's Veterans Choice program, Dr. Lawrence Goldberg of St. Petersburg is still waiting for the Department of Veterans Affairs to pay up. "A couple of months would be fine, but this is getting kind of ridiculous," Dr. Goldberg said. Money isn't the only problem. The Veterans Choice program was born to helps veterans get in to see private sector doctors and to reduce waiting times to schedule appointments. Heath Net, which runs the Veterans Choice program, requires voluminous documentation, Goldberg said.
Johns Hopkins Hospital will get a new president this summer, according to an email Tuesday to the Hopkins medical community from Ronald R. Peterson, the 10th person to hold the position. Peterson, who has served in the role for almost two decades, will stay on at Hopkins in his other role helping lead Johns Hopkins Medicine, the umbrella alliance of the Hopkins health system and the Hopkins medical school. The new president will report to him. Peterson wrote that Johns Hopkins Medicine has grown in size and complexity during his tenure and, as a result, Peterson, the dean and the board of trustees decided it was a good time to recruit the next president.
Five rival hospitals filed complaints to overturn the state's approval of Jackson Health System's proposed hospital in Doral. The Agency for Health Care Administration approved the Miami-Dade County public health system's application for the 100-bed Jackson West Hospital in December, but rejected for-profit HCA's proposal for an 80-bed hospital in the same area. The agency said that Jackson's plan would best serve the needs of the public. Given that Doral is a major employment center and has many well-paid residents, hospitals are willing to fight for patients there.
When Saint Michael's Medical Center, a 150-year-old Newark institution, filed for bankruptcy this summer, it set in motion a process to determine the community hospital's future. It also raised the prospect that the state would use a deal on St. Michael's to re-shape Newark's healthcare landscape. Nearly a third of city residents currently travel outside Newark for their hospital services. And a new report commissioned by the state suggested all Newark-area hospitals would fare better if Saint Michael's was converted to an outpatient facility. Prime Healthcare, a for-profit hospital chain based in California, offered to buy the hospital, keep it open for five years and save about 1,400 jobs if New Jersey approved the $62 million deal.
Veteran Dave Manning served two combat deployments in Iraq and was the sole medical provider for more than 100 people on a Navy ship. But as he contemplated his post-military job prospects, he struggled. "Nothing I've done really translates over [to civilian jobs] beyond basic EMT," said Manning, who served 15 years in the Navy and five more in the Army. "Trying to find something in the medical field without any credentials, without any licensure is tough. There's nothing out there." Manning is in the inaugural class of a physician assistant training program launched this month by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and geared at recruiting non-traditional students — specifically, veterans, as the country seeks to improve health care by expanding the number of primary care providers.
Trials of cancer screening should adopt overall mortality -- not cancer-specific mortality -- as the benchmark outcome to resolve once and for all the question of whether screening saves lives, authors of a review concluded.