The Massachusetts Department of Public Health plans to hold a half-dozen public hearings jointly with the state attorney general's office to consider a private equity firm's plan to buy Caritas Christi Health Care, which owns six Catholic hospitals in Eastern Massachusetts. The attorney general's office will review the plans of New York-based Cerberus Capital Management, which agreed in March to buy the Caritas Christi system, and make a recommendation to the state Supreme Judicial Court. The public health department must also sign off on the proposed purchase by granting new hospital licenses, the Boston Globe reports.
A union hearing for a temporary injunction to stop the Jackson Health System from implementing layoffs is scheduled May 13, the Service Employees International Union announced on its website. The lawsuit comes in response to the layoffs of about 400 Jackson workers. SEIU complains that Jackson's governing body, the Public Health Trust, is violating its own standards for patient safety by laying off physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses and other healthcare professionals.
The Food and Drug Administration announced it will begin asking doctors to keep an eye out for misleading drug advertisements as part of the agency's latest effort to police the pharmaceutical industry's multibillion-dollar marketing efforts. The agency's "bad ad program" urges doctors to report ads and sales pitches that violate FDA rules. Drug companies are legally required to present a balanced picture of a drug's benefits and risks in promotions, though critics charge that many TV and magazine ads fail to do so, the Associated Press reports.
United Surgical Partners Inc., an Addison, TX-based medical firm, is expanding its current office after looking at potential relocation sites. United Surgical Partners Inc., one of the country's largest operators and developers of ambulatory surgery centers and hospitals, has expanded its office to 82,706 square feet of space. United Surgical operates or has ownership in 171 surgical centers in the U.S. and England. It has more than two dozen facilities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
After an eight-year battle over who should dominate its growing healthcare market, Loudoun County, VA, will get a major hospital at its southern end. But the 164-bed facility won't break ground for more than a year and will take at least five years to build, officials said. Richmond, VA-based Hospital Corp. of America must submit site plans and seek other county approvals for StoneSpring Regional Medical Center, and it will not open until December 2015, the Washington Post reports.
Leaders of Minnesota's hospital, nurse, and doctors' associations have added their voices to a healthcare debate between Gov. Tim Pawlenty and legislators, urging the state to cover its poorest residents with the state-federal Medicaid health program rather than a slimmed-down state plan negotiated last month. With a week to go before the legislature is to adjourn, the groups urged enactment of a bill supported by DFL leaders and opposed by Pawlenty that would shift about 37,000 patients from General Assistance Medical Care to Medicaid, called Medical Assistance in Minnesota.