These days, more young adults are staying with their pediatricians at least through their college years, says David Tayloe, a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, who still practices in Goldsboro, N.C. Even though most colleges have health services on campus, when students are home for weekends and holidays and need a doctor, the pediatrician's office may be staffed when the adult-oriented internist's office isn't. "We're cheaper and nicer and easier to get a hold of," says Katherine Karlsrud, MD, a Manhattan pediatrician. Besides, she notes, "if your kid is out of town and gets into trouble, he's more likely to call the pediatrician he's known all his life than the new internist who happens to be his parents' doctor, too." Many pediatric practices are working hard to make their offices comfortable for older teens, with separate waiting areas, reading material and even adolescent specialists on staff. And many form bonds with patients that last into adulthood.
The Obama administration is investigating pay practices throughout the health care industry after finding that many hospitals and nursing homes do not pay proper overtime to nurses and other employees who work more than 40 hours a week. Hospitals around the country have paid millions of dollars in back wages to settle claims by the government and their employees. And many more hospitals are fighting class-action lawsuits that raise the same issues. In St. Louis, the Labor Department has recovered more than $1.7 million in back wages for 4,000 employees of hospitals and clinics operated by SSM Health Care, a Roman Catholic system. In Boston, the Partners HealthCare System agreed to pay 700 employees more than $2.7 million in overtime back wages to resolve a lawsuit by the department alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. And under the proposed settlement of a class-action lawsuit in California, Kaiser Permanente would pay $7.25 million to hundreds of registered nurse coordinators, case managers and other medical workers. The employees said they had been denied overtime pay because they were improperly classified as exempt. Kaiser denied wrongdoing but has agreed to the settlement.
The Obama administration recently invested more than $1 billion from the stimulus and the healthcare law into the National Health Services Corps to beef up doctor recruitment. It's more money than the 40-year-old agency has ever had. Nearly 5,000 recent medical school graduates accepted federal grants to pay off tuition and school loans averaging $150,000 per student. The awards come with contracts that obligate the young doctors to remain in what are typically rural areas for three to five years. The corps hopes to recruit another 2,800 students next year. A report by the corps' advisory council estimated that 27,000 primary care physicians are needed to meet the needs of about 45 million Americans in medically underserved areas. But several young doctors who were interviewed said they are struggling with whether to spend a career in rural settings. Experts said they expect retention to be a problem.
The county hospital will build two new operating rooms under a $649 million budget unanimously approved Saturday by the Tarrant County Hospital Board. The new operating rooms will help reduce what can be a six- to nine-month wait for some procedures such as hip and knee replacements, officials said. The hospital currently has 10 operating rooms, two of which must be reserved for trauma and heart patients. Other priorities included in the budget are money for an electronic medical records system and the addition of new open-heart surgery procedures. Open-heart surgery patients were previously transferred to other hospitals. The network is facing an $8 million loss in property tax revenue and a $2 million to $4 million drop in reimbursement for treating Medicaid patients in fiscal year 2011, which starts Oct. 1. But CEO Robert Earley said the network would absorb the lost revenue through efficiency measures, and the losses will not hurt patient care.
A Tampa doctor accused of allowing unlicensed assistants to perform liposuction should have his license suspended for a year and pay a $50,000 fine, the Florida Board of Medicine decided Saturday. The board's action was a move to address the growing concern about physicians with limited cosmetic surgery training working in medical spas. Many patients don't realize that popular cosmetic treatments, from laser hair removal to liposuction, can inflict serious harm. In an alarming case, a South Florida physician recently had to give up his license after a patient died following complications from a liposuction procedure.
The job creation roller coaster ride continues for the nation's hospitals.
Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary data released Friday show that hospitals shed 2,300 jobs in July, after reporting 3,000 payroll additions in June, which followed 1,400 reductions in May.
BLS information from June and July is considered preliminary and may be considerably revised in the coming months.
Hospitals have reported 15,200 payroll additions in the first seven months of 2010, compared with 6,500 payroll additions in the first seven months of 2009, according to BLS data and revised preliminary data.
Hospitals last reported sustained payroll reductions in 2000, when 2,200 jobs were lost between January and April, BLS data show.
Overall, the economy lost 131,000 jobs in July, as the nation's jobless rate held steady at 9.5%. The decline in payroll employment reflected the loss of 143,000 temporary jobs from the U.S. Census Bureau, while private sector payrolls increased by 71,000, BLS preliminary data show.
Job growth in the healthcare sector continues to be powered by ambulatory services, which accounted for 23,100 payroll additions in July, and 87,500 payroll additions in the first seven months of 2010. Nursing and residential care facilities reported 5,800 payroll additions, and physicians' offices reported 1,100 payroll additions, BLS preliminary data show.
The healthcare sector—everything from hospitals, to chiropractors' offices, blood and organ donor banks, to walk-in clinics—employed 13.7 million people in July, and has been one of the few areas of job growth during the recession and sputtering recovery, creating 27,000 new jobs in July, and 231,000 jobs in the past 12 months. Healthcare created 215,300 jobs in 2009, and 665,300 jobs since the recession began in December 2007, BLS data and preliminary data show.
In the larger economy, 14.6 million people were unemployed in the United States in June, and 6.6 million of them were long-term unemployed who'd been without a job for at least 27 weeks, BLS reports.