An investigation stemming from complaints about the handling of a belligerent emergency room patient by a Bristol Regional Medical Center employee is behind a recent public notice by the agency responsible for Medicare that the hospital’s Medicare payments will stop after Aug. 27. The announcement by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has many area residents who depend on Medicare for their health coverage worried and hospital officials scrambling to let people know they have things under control. “We do not expect to be excluded from the Medicare program,” Wellmont Health System Chief Medical Officer Dale Sargent said Monday during a hastily scheduled news conference. Wellmont owns and operates BRMC, along with nine other hospitals in the area. Currently, 60 percent of BRMC’s patients are covered by Medicare, hospital officials said.
Two huge regional hospitals in northern Colorado — Longmont United Hospital and Poudre Valley Health System in Fort Collins — said Monday that they will jointly build a medical campus for underserved southwest Weld County. The 70-acre complex is planned for the northeast corner of Interstate 25 and Colorado 52 in Frederick. "The campus will fill a need for convenient medical services that have been absent in our area," said Mayor Eric Doering. "Our area will also benefit from new job opportunities and economic growth." A site master plan for the campus will be under development until late fall. The campus size and cost have not been determined, said Longmont United spokeswoman Karen Logan. The first building to go up is expected to be an urgent care center, followed by other medical buildings. Mitchell Carson, Longmont United's president and chief executive, said rapid growth in southwest Weld demanded that a high-quality medical facility be developed there.
One of the fastest-growing companies in the Northwest has little to do with high-tech, biotech, or cleantech. Tacoma, WA-based Sound Physicians owes its rapid rise to an innovative form of healthcare delivery that hospitals are flocking to as part of their ongoing quest to save money and improve patient care. Sound Physicians has got to be one of the hottest local growth companies that few have heard of. This privately held firm, founded in 2000, eclipsed $100 million in revenue last year, runs in the black, and has grown to more than 500 employees, with more than 400 of them physicians. The company doesn’t envision going public, although it is seeking to branch out from its core customer base in the Western states and Midwest to build a company that serves hospitals with physicians-for-hire from coast to coast.
A peer-reviewed paper to be published Wednesday in a leading journal of neuropathology, however, suggests that the demise of athletes like Lou Gehrig and soldiers given a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, might have been catalyzed by injuries only now becoming understood: concussions and other brain trauma. Although the paper does not discuss Gehrig specifically, its authors in interviews acknowledged the clear implication: Lou Gehrig might not have had Lou Gehrig’s disease. Doctors at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Bedford, MA, and the Boston University School of Medicine, the primary researchers of brain damage among deceased National Football League players, said that markings in the spinal cords of two players and one boxer who also received a diagnosis of A.L.S. indicated that those men did not have A.L.S. They had a different fatal disease, doctors said, caused by concussionlike trauma, that erodes the central nervous system in similar ways.
A coalition of former employees of St. Vincent's Hospital and Lower Manhattan community advocates said they have filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court Monday to shed light on financial mishandling that they say helped shut down the hospital. St. Vincent's closed on April 30, citing a debt of a billion dollars, and forced 3,000 employees to lose their jobs. "We had a culture there that was very caring and we worked together as a team," said Eileen Dunn, the former president of the St. Vincent's Nurses Association. The lawsuit claims that St. Vincent's executives wasted millions of dollars while exaggerating their debts .The documents say that in one year, the hospital paid its top 10 executives a combined $10 million and spent $17 million for management consultants and nearly $4 million on professional fundraising.
The state released its first report yesterday on hospital infections, showing that patients developed 134 infections last year while being treated for another condition -- a number lower than expected, based on national data. The report, the result of a 2006 state law, examined infections during 2009 that developed from central lines -- catheters inserted in blood vessels near the heart or other major vessel -- and their insertion practices. The report also looked at infections that developed after heart, colon and knee surgeries, and at influenza vaccination rates among hospital staff. Officials said the number infected overall was 26% lower than expected, based on national data from 2006 to 2008. The report said officials expected to see 180 infections at New Hampshire hospitals in that time period.