With one hospital closing and others slashing budgets, New York City's healthcare-job marketplace could get crowded in the coming days, and some employees fear they could be facing a long spell without work. More than 3,500 employees will have lost their jobs when St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan effectively closes on April 30, weeks after filing for bankruptcy when deals to merge with other hospital systems fell apart. And more layoffs could be coming, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Temple University Hospital may wind up paying its striking nurses and allied health professionals for their time on the picket line. That's because, through a wrinkle in Pennsylvania labor law, the 28-day strike that ended with a tentative agreement may end up being ruled a lockout. And if it is, the 1,500 nurses, technologists, and therapists who voted overwhelmingly to ratify the contract will qualify for unemployment benefits. If they do qualify, Temple will end up footing the bill because it does not contribute to the Pennsylvania trust fund that pays unemployment. Instead, it pays unemployment-compensation claims directly as they arise, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
Andy Stern's choice to succeed him as president of the Service Employees International Union dropped out of the race, clearing the way for the union's top healthcare strategist to ascend to the post. Stern's longtime protege, Anna Burger, said in a memo that she would support her rival, Mary Kay Henry, an SEIU international executive vice president. Henry, 52, heads the union's healthcare division, which accounts for close to half of the SEIU's 2.2 million members nationwide.
TriStar Health System has started to broadcast about how long patients would have to wait to see a medical provider at one of its nine emergency rooms in the Nashville region. TriStar launched a campaign to post real-time emergency room wait times using billboards, the Internet, text messaging, and iPhones. HCA-owned TriStar has nine hospitals in its Nashville region—Southern Hills, Summit, Centennial, Skyline, Stonecrest, Hendersonville, Horizon, Ashland City and Greenview in Bowling Green, KY. Each hospital has an electronic billboard with its wait time and a slogan, "Fast ER."
Cosmetic surgery wasn't as popular in 2009 as it used to be, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, which annually surveys its members as well as dermatologists and ear-nose-and-throat doctors. The declines reported in this survey echoed the findings of another recent survey by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, which found an even steeper decline in cosmetic-surgery procedures performed last year. Yet some doctors express confidence that there is pent-up demand, the New York Times reports.
In addition to seeing patients, a primary-care physician each day must address more than three dozen urgent but uncompensated tasks, according to a study. Answering telephone calls and e-mail messages, refilling prescriptions, reviewing lab test results, and consulting with other doctors consume large amounts of time each day, even though none of it is paid for, the study found.