Facebook announced Wednesday that it will integrate it's "Like" button throughout the Internet, starting with popular Web sites such as NYTimes.com, IMDb, CNN.com, TIME.com, LIFE.com, Fandango, NHL.com, USA Networks, Levis.com, Univision and ABC.com.
The board of Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center plans to impose financial penalties on chief executive Paul Levy for undisclosed lapses of judgment in a personal relationship with a female employee, according to two hospital sources. The board discussed requiring Levy to repay the hospital for a severance package that was given to the woman when she left her job last year at Beth Israel Deaconess-Needham, as well as withholding bonus money from him this year, the sources told the Boston Globe.
After four marathon days of negotiating, Philadelphia-based Temple University Hospital and its 1,500 nurses and allied health professionals reached an agreement to end a 28-day strike that began March 31. The employees plan to return to work at 7 p.m. April 30, assuming the proposed contract is approved during three ratification votes. After the members of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals vote, the proposal will be presented to the management of the Temple University Health System.
A compromise plan to provide healthcare for thousands of the Minnesota's poorest residents appeared to be unraveling after Hennepin County affirmed its decision not to participate. The health program for more than 35,000 people, brokered last month by legislators and Gov. Tim Pawlenty, is supposed to take effect June 1. But by late Tuesday, it appeared that as many as 16 of the 17 hospitals that were to participate may refuse, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
Worcester, MA-based Saint Vincent Hospital is not run by the church. Its corporate owner, Vanguard Health Systems of Nashville, has made a fortune converting nonprofit hospitals to for-profits, and it has committed to maintaining Saint Vincent's religious identity—much as Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm, has pledged to do if it acquires Boston's Catholic hospital network, Caritas Christi Health Care. Caritas and Cerberus are drafting a stewardship agreement with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, detailing how the six Caritas hospitals' Catholic identity will be preserved, the Boston Globe reports.
The cost of scans such as CT, MRI, and PET for cancer patients is rising faster than the total cost of those people's medical care, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds. The JAMA study, by Duke University researchers, tracked the increase in costs between 1999 and 2006 among Medicare beneficiaries with six types of cancer. "Significant" annual increases in imaging use occurred among all the cancers, with lung cancer and lymphoma patients incurring more than $3,000 in imaging costs within two years of diagnosis.