The passage of the new health reform legislation promises to keep hospitals and physicians busily focused on price transparency, rate regulation, bundled incentives and growing capacity constraints. As this broad transformation in payment structures, incentives and mandates takes place, hospitals and physicians must secure alignment strategies to best position themselves within high-performing Systems of CARE (Clinical Alignment and Resource Effectiveness) in the 2010s. Despite many unanswered questions about the new legislation’s impact, what is certain is the need for physician alignment strategies that formally engage the majority of the medical staff. Hospitals seeking to improve their market position and/or protect share must move quickly. Whether or not this means near-term movement toward the accountable care organization (ACO) direction or not, for most this will entail pursuing high-integration physician strategies that link employed, partnered and independent physicians through technology and shared incentives.,/p>
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the top executive of a national hospital firm that owns medical properties in eastern New Orleans met for a real estate negotiation this week but came to no agreement for the city to buy the vacant Methodist Hospital on Read Boulevard. Landrieu highlighted his meeting with Universal Health Services President Marc Miller during his first state of the city address Thursday afternoon, and he used it again to criticize both UHS and his predecessor, Ray Nagin, for leaving eastern New Orleans without a full-service hospital five years after Hurricane Katrina. According to Landrieu, UHS rejected his proposal to buy the Methodist property for $9.7 million, the lowest value assigned to the building among several appraisals the city has secured in recent years.
Isabella, 4, is receiving extended care for a long-term illness at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. When she is having a good day, she sits up in her bed or heads to her hospital room play tent and strums a midnight blue ukulele with her mother. The youngster has had access to the instrument for about six weeks, according to Brian Schreck, a music therapist at the hospital. When she is having a good day, she sits up in her bed When her mother softly plays a familiar song on the ukulele, Isabella smiles. When Isabella creates her own ditty, and strums the strings in just the right way, she giggles. It's that moment of unfettered joy that makes the music therapy program worthwhile.
As part of the trend in developing surgeries without external wounds, surgeons last week removed a woman's gallbladder through her mouth. The operation was performed as part of a clinical trial at UC San Diego School of Medicine. The surgery is called NOTES -- which stands for natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery. The idea is to use the mouth or vagina as routes to parts of the body requiring surgery. In traditional laparoscopic -- or minimally invasive -- surgery, doctors make several small incisions through the abdominal wall and insert a tiny camera and tools to remove the gallbladder or appendix. That type of surgery is a big improvement upon the long, open incisions that patients used to require.
Miami-Dade County Commissioners put a swift halt to plans to close the obstetrics unit at Jackson South Community Hospital on Thursday, while berating the Public Health Trust that runs Jackson for its decision last week to close the money-losing center. The county commission's move to overrule the shuttering of the under-used obstetrics facility illustrates the tough challenges the Public Health Trust faces in finding ways to reverse losses at Jackson Memorial Hospital while preserving its mission of providing vital public health services. The Public Health Trust voted to close the obstetrics unit at Jackson South because it is projected to lose $2.57 million this year and averages only eight patients daily. The trust said those pregnant women would be welcome at Jackson Memorial, 21 miles away.
<p><advertisement></advertisement>Massachusetts hospitals as a whole outperform hospitals across the country on the quality of outpatient care, including providing fast treatment to emergency room patients with chest pain and protecting surgery patients from infections, according to new federal data.The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released data yesterday that for the first time show how well hospitals care for patients on nine different measures of outpatient care. Since 2005, the agency has provided information on the quality of care hospitals provide overnight patients.</p>