The New Jersey legislature has passed the Safe Patient Handling Act, a bill meant to reduce injuries to hospital and nursing home employees and patients. The bill requires the healthcare facilities to develop plans to minimize manual lifting by employees.
Middle Tennessee Medical Center has received a final stamp of approval and a $10 million pledge construction of a new hospital. The hospital will break ground on the $268 million, 560,000-square-foot project in early 2008, and it is scheduled for completion by 2010.
HealthSouth Corp. and one of the nation's most prominent orthopedic surgeons have greed to pay almost $15 million to settle civil claims over what the government said was an illegal kickback scheme.
HealthReach, a free medical clinic in Lake County, IL, has renovated its Mundelein location. The clinic has more than doubled its capacity to serve patients by adding medical and dental exam rooms and a clinical laboratory to the small facility in a mini-mall.
Even the most conservative mainstream research hospitals are trying alternative treatment methods such as acupuncture, hypnosis, meditation, guided imagery and massage.
Several health-insurance companies have agreed to improve their existing or planned ratings of physicians. The insurers have agreed to rate quality as well as cost and to use independently accepted criteria, instead of just claims data to rate physicians.