A 14-month pilot program at UCLA taps into the surplus of medical school graduates in Latin America and attempts to address the shortage of Spanish-speaking doctors in the United States. The program is privately-funded, and is seeking to expand enrollment.
Under legislation that has passed in the Senate, physicians will get a six-month reprieve from a 10 percent rate cut when treating Medicare patients. Doctors had warned that a cut in reimbursement rates would lead to physicians taking on fewer new Medicare patients, but now they'll receive a 0.5 percent raise when they treat the elderly and disabled.
A new report compiled by the Trust for America's Health says that while many states have made progress in preparing for a potential public health disaster, much more needs to be done. In addition, representatives from the nonpartisan advocacy group say that cuts in federal funding for state and local preparedness programs "threaten the nation's safety."
The government is promising $45 trillion more than it can deliver on Social Security, Medicare and other benefit programs. That is the gap between the promises the government has made in benefits and the projected revenue stream for these programs over the next 75 years, the Bush administration estimated.
Stanford (CA) Medical Center--made up of Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital--has picked two sets of lead architects to design a joint expansion and seismic upgrade project that could cost as much as $2 billion.
Ohioans who want to know which hospitals fared best for risky and expensive treatments such as open-heart surgery or kidney transplants likely have been disappointed by the Ohio Department of Health. But a new administration, new health director and new state law requiring public health information could move Ohio closer to transparency regarding quality of care at healthcare providers.