April 1 marks the day that Medicare?s 21% reimbursement pay cuts were to go into effect, and Congress left for its Easter recess without voting to delay the scheduled start of lower payments to doctors. The agency that oversees Medicare has effectively delayed the cuts by deciding not to pay claims for the first 10 business days in April. When Congress returns, it's still expected to adopt another law to delay the cuts for longer. In the short-term, doctors' cash flow should not be disrupted much, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. But the long-standing threat of Medicare cuts are weighing on doctors, say medical societies.
Shouting slogans and hoisting placards, hundreds of Temple University Hospital nurses and technical employees walked a picket line amid a standoff over management demands for benefit cuts and other union concessions. Some 1,500 nurses and technical staff walked off their jobs March 31, incensed that the hospital had eliminated a popular tuition assistance program and had failed to add nurses in what they described as understaffed units, among other grievances, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker, announced that it paid about $20 million to 4,500 doctors and other medical professionals for consulting and speaking on its behalf in the last six months of 2009. Pfizer also paid $15.3 million to 250 academic medical centers and other research groups for clinical trials in the same period. The announcements are Pfizer's first public accounting of payments to the people who decide which drugs to recommend, the New York Times reports.
It will cost up to $52 million in capital upgrades at Provident Hospital before the money-losing hospital would be ready for a partnership with the University of Chicago Medical Center, a consultant's report says. The Cook County (IL) Health & Hospitals System is studying whether to form a partnership that would bring the the University of Chicago's physicians to Provident to treat patients and train aspiring doctors. Provident would benefit by receiving patient referrals and a marketing boost by adding the University of Chicago's name and patient care expertise to the 119-bed facility, the Chicago Tribune reports.
San Francisco's St. Mary's Medical Center celebrated the construction kickoff of a $22.75 million cancer center that will allow patients to undergo radiation and chemotherapy in one location. The 14,200-square-foot center will occupy the ground floor of a St. Mary's facility. It is expected that the new equipment will treat approximately 400 chemotherapy and 200 radiation patients annually. The center also will add 17 employees.
The University of Miami medical school has become one of the first in the country to offer an online, searchable database revealing its doctors' relationships with outside businesses. The UM website is searchable by name of faculty member or by name of company. It will be updated at least annually and now includes data for fiscal 2009. It lists doctors' relationship with outside companies—but not the dollar amounts of the deals, which will start to be added later this year.