The healthcare overhaul may have slipped from the headlines since President Obama signed the bill into law in March, but the chore of putting the statute's more than 2,000 pages of provisions into practice is keeping Washington's policymakers and bureaucrats busier than ever, the Washington Post reports. Most Mondays and Thursdays, Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, meets with several dozen top officials to weigh in on the myriad sensitive decisions required to translate the law's mandates into fine print.
The Federal Trade Commission's "red flags rule" requires businesses offering credit to come up with a written policy for finding, preventing, and dealing with identity theft. But the law is controversial, and has been delayed several times—most recently, last week, when the FTC pushed off until Dec. 31 the implementation originally scheduled for June 1. The American Bar Association sued last year, saying the law shouldn't apply to lawyers, and a judge agreed. Now the American Medical Association is making its own case for exemption. Last week the group and two others—the American Osteopathic Association and the Medical Society of the District of Columbia, sued the FTC, arguing physicians should not be subject to the rule, the Wall Street Journal Health Blog reports.
A medical residents pay lawsuit filed by the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The nation's highest court said that it will hear the case, Mayo Foundation v. United States. The lawsuit contests a U.S. Treasury Department decision earlier in the decade to start levying Social Security taxes on the residents.
Memorial Healthcare System announced that two of its hospitals will become teaching institutions for the new medical schools of Florida International and Florida Atlantic universities. The affiliation agreements will allow students enrolled in the medical school programs to receive clinical training from Memorial physicians in specialties that include pediatrics, obstetrics, family medicine, behavioral medicine, and palliative care. The training will be done at Memorial Regional Hospital and Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital. The affiliations are scheduled to last three to 10 years.
About 1,300 housekeepers and lab workers at several UMass Memorial Health Care facilities in Worcester have reached a tentative contract agreement with the company, averting a potential strike. Members of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1445 were expected to meet to ratify the deal, which was reached about one week after the union rejected a proposed two-year contract and authorized the strike.
The Ritz-Carlton's medical-concierge program, now expanded after a trial run to include hospitals and medical facilities throughout the Philadelphia area, aims to provide a pampering bridge between the hospital room and the patient's home. The concierge does not perform medical procedures or administer drugs. Rather, say hotel and patient-referral officials at local hospitals, the program offers such services as wake-up calls for medical appointments, transportation to and from doctors' offices, special sleep arrangements, custom dietary options, prescription pickups, and babysitting services for pets or children.