LifePoint Hospitals and its CEO/President Bill Carpenter oversee 48 acute care facilities and 21,000 employees over 17 states. In an interview with Tennessean Carpenter discussed the evolving but uncertain world of healthcare, and how it might play out for hospital companies with cash to spend and an appetite to grow.
Used to be, orthopedic specialists would rarely see an octogenarian with a sports injury, let alone one who was hankering to get fixed and back to his or her game. But that scenario is becoming more commonplace among older athletes, inspiring specialists and society as a whole to rethink aging, athletics, and the realm of the possible. Between 2001 and 2008, the largest increase in the number of rotator cuff and knee surgeries was among patients over 61, according to the most recent national data compiled by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The steepest increase, jumping from 21 to 28 percent of all such surgeries during that time period, occurred among patients ages 61 to 70 who underwent arthroplasty to repair or replace ailing knees. During the same time, the percentage of patients under 40 receiving knee or rotator cuff surgeries declined.
The health care industry has a garbage problem. It’s not just that hospitals, doctors’ offices, clinics and other health facilities generate several billion pounds of garbage each year: buried in that mountain of trash are untold numbers of unused disposable medical devices as well as used but recyclable supplies and equipment, from excess syringes and gauze to surgical instruments. The problem, fueled by a shift toward the use of disposables that made it simple to keep treatment practices sterile, has been an open secret for years, but getting the health care industry to change its habits has not been easy. No organization currently tracks how much medical trash the United States produces — the last known estimate, from the early 1990s, was two million tons a year.
At Bank of America Corp. next year, how much employees make will determine how much they pay for health insurance. The Charlotte bank has been informing its U.S. employees about the new approach, which means lower-paid workers will pay less and higher-paid ones will pay more for their coverage in 2011. Salary-tiered health insurance programs are still an "emerging trend," but an increasing number of companies are adopting this approach, human resources consulting firm Hewitt Associates found last year. Less than 15 percent of employers vary employee contributions based on pay, according to the firm's 2010 database of 2,307 plans.
A class-action suit has been filed against three Rhode Island medical groups that implanted unapproved birth-control devices in hundreds of women. The suit names OB-GYN Associates, Bayside OB-GYN and the Center for Obstetrics & Gynecology as defendants, but leaves open the possibility of adding additional defendants as more are discovered. It was filed Wednesday in Superior Court, Providence, by personal-injury lawyer Ronald J. Resmini.
A Clackamas County judge ruled Thursday that a couple who belong to a church that embraces faith healing must surrender their child for failing to provide medical care. Circuit Judge Douglas V. Van Dyk gave the state temporary custody of the child and ordered medical treatment as directed by doctors at Oregon Health & Science University.