The Cleveland Clinic will decide within three months whether to build a 200-bed hospital in Shanghai, China. The cost of building the hospital, which would specialize in cardiac care, would be $80 million to $100 million, with Chinese and other private investors involved. Physicians from the United States and China would staff the hospital.
General Motors says its new contract with the United Auto Workers will help cut its annual U.S. labor costs by $5 billion between now and 2011. The four-year pact shifts the obligation for about $46.7 billion in retired UAW worker healthcare from the company to the union, with the company pouring about $26.5 billion into a trust fund run by the union. Senior executives of GM touted the benefits of the labor contract and other cost reductions the company has implemented since a disastrous 2005 in which it lost more than $10 billion. Ford Motor Co., which posted a $12.6 billion loss for 2006, reached a similar contract agreement with the UAW following the GM contract resolution.
As part of a new policy that experts say is one of the toughest in the nation blocking pharmaceutical companies from influencing doctors, Duluth, MN-based SMDC Health System has banned nearly every freebie with a drug company name on it. Abolishing all logos from their facilities marks the latest and most drastic in a series of steps many of Minnesota's top healthcare institutions have taken in recent years to limit the doctor-drug rep relationship.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire is proposing a $3 million program for hospitals, community colleges to train current healthcare workers for nursing jobs. Gregoire says that with the state nursing shortage, nurse assistants, surgical technicians and other workers could be trained on the job and become registered nurses.
Civil rights attorneys have sued Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in connection with the alleged dumping of a paraplegic man on skid row. The suit was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of the man, and seeks unspecified punitive and compensatory damages against the hospital for alleged elder abuse, negligence and infliction of emotional distress.
University of Illinois trustees have voted to ask the state for $150 million over five years to train future doctors and other health professionals. University leaders also plan to request $10 million to expand and renovate the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center.