St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center has announced that Theodore M. Pasinski will step down as CEO/president, effective Dec. 31. Pasinski has been employed at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center since 1974. Beginning in 1994, he became president/CEO.
U.S. Senate Democrats and Republicans have reached agreement to postpone by six months scheduled cuts in Medicare payments to doctors. The Senate adopted the measure by voice vote shortly after Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., NV), and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., KY) announced the deal. It now falls to the House to take up the Senate-passed Medicare fix, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Officials with the Virginia Department of Health have recommended that the state's health commissioner deny two proposals that would expand the number of healthcare options in western Prince William County. Applications for new hospitals in the Gainesville-Haymarket area were submitted to the state by Sentara Healthcare and Prince William Health System in January. Although the Prince William Health System's application was well received at a public hearing and by the Health Systems Agency of Northern Virginia, the state's Certificate of Public Need division recommended that both proposals be denied.
The bankruptcy of St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan has not been a gaping wound for just its staff and patients. It has also injured the merchants along the avenues who relied on the hospital's work force and the residents who will miss the bustling atmosphere the hospital created, the New York Times reports.
In his first major move concerning the teaching hospital slated for the city, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu has called for a 45-day review of the designs for the $1.2 billion, 424-bed successor to Charity Hospital. According to a letter to Timmy Teppell, Gov. Bobby Jindal's chief of staff, and other state officials, Landrieu has instructed the City Planning Commission to assign Goody Clancy, the firm contracted to manage the city's master plan process, to conduct an "architectural peer review to improve the design."
Suburban Hospital should revamp its $200 million planned expansion in Bethesda, MD, that neighbors have complained could disrupt the nearby community, a Montgomery County hearing examiner said. The 162-page report from chief hearing examiner Francoise M. Carrier said the hospital proposal does not mesh with long-standing county plans to maintain a residential feel along Old Georgetown Road, where the hospital has delivered healthcare since 1943. The report, a recommendation to the county's appeals board, can carry substantial weight when that part-time zoning panel considers the case later this year, the Washington Post reports.