The American Medical Association has established a multi-million dollar ad campaign that states Senators left town for a Memorial Day vacation rather than staying to deal with the looming cuts in Medicare reimbursement to doctors. The AMA wants the public to contact senators and tell them to "get back to work and fix Medicare now." A 21% cut in reimbursement rates to doctors officially took effect June 1, but CMS put a 10-business-day hold on payment processing.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick administration officials, seeking to pressure hospitals as well as insurers to rein in costs, say they will more closely scrutinize plans for new medical buildings and technologies to determine how they might affect the cost of healthcare in Massachusetts. The move is intended to halt what some call an escalating "medical arms race," in which Boston teaching hospitals vie with suburban hospitals to establish new outpatient care centers and buy expensive imaging and detection equipment that can draw hefty reimbursements from Medicare and private insurers, the Boston Globe reports.
St. Paul (MN) Radiology, a private medical practice of radiologists, is exiting the teleradiology business, said its president and CEO in an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "We did not feel that after three years we were especially well suited to operate in that environment and that it distracted us from our core business," said Dr. Michael T. Madison, St. Paul Radiology's president and CEO. St. Paul Radiology has been trying to exit out of a long-term agreement it had with Scottsdale, AZ-based NightHawk Radiology Services over the last few months.
Les Donahue has resigned as president and chief executive of Nashville's Saint Thomas Hospital to take on the same role with a larger hospital in Atlanta. Donahue will become president and CEO of Piedmont Hospital on July 12. His four-year stint at Saint Thomas ends on June 30, a day before Dr. Michael H. Schatzlein becomes CEO of its parent hospital system, Saint Thomas Health Services, The Tennessean reports.
The union representing about 1,300 lab workers, food service workers, housekeepers, and other employees at UMass Memorial Health Care has ratified a new two-year contract. The vice president of United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1445, said that its members voted by a 4 to 1 margin to accept a contract giving them wage increases while keeping employee healthcare contributions at current levels.
In July, new medical residents arrive at hospitals, and rumor/legend/conventional wisdom holds that the "July effect" produced by those newbies means it's a dangerous month for hospital patients. A study published last year concluded the myth did not hold true at one trauma center. But researchers from the University of California at San Diego and UCLA set out to investigate the phenomenon, and homed in on fatal medication errors inside medical institutions, assuming those are "more likely to be influenced by inexperienced residents than by patients." The authors write that the findings "provide fresh evidence" for rethinking the responsibilities assigned to incoming residents, boosting supervision, and increasing medication safety education.