Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said that employers should immediately offer or continue health insurance coverage for workers' children up to the age of 26, at little or no additional cost. Employers will have to offer such coverage under the new healthcare law, and Sebelius said they should act sooner, without waiting for the requirement to take effect. At the request of the Obama administration, more than 65 insurers have already agreed to allow young adults to stay on their parents' policies before the insurers are required to do so, under the new law, later this year or early next year, the New York Times reports.
Washington, DC-based Sibley Memorial Hospital and Johns Hopkins Health are in talks to have Sibley become a subsidiary of the Baltimore-based health system, officials announced. The development will give the $4.5 billion Hopkins system a greater presence in the Washington, DC, region, with a foothold in a part of affluent Washington where patients have insurance. Officials of both systems say it is anticipated that Sibley will join Johns Hopkins Health in early fall. Sibley spokeswoman Sheliah Roy said the nonprofit, 328-bed hospital is not being sold and will stay open.
After a weeklong stand-off, Minneapolis-St. Pual nurses nurses and their hospitals appear headed back to the negotiating table. Six hospital groups—representing 14 hospitals—e-mailed letters to the union representing 12,000 nurses asking to restart talks and to include a federal mediator. The nurses had overwhelmingly voted on May 19 to authorize a one-day strike. Since then, each side has accused the other of not doing enough to avert what could be the biggest strike in U.S. nursing history, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
The 10 doctors of Comprehensive Cardiology Consultants have joined St. Elizabeth Healthcare, becoming the only cardiologists directly employed by the Northern Kentucky hospital system. John Dubis, St. Elizabeth's chief operating officer. would not disclose terms of the deal, which brings St. Elizabeth's physician total to 150, mostly primary-care providers. St. Elizabeth will continue to work with Northern Kentucky’s independent cardiology groups, including Cardiology Associates and Northern Kentucky Heart, the Business Courier of Cincinnati reports.
The secretary of health and human services says the government has an obligation to spread the word about the new healthcare law. To that end, the department spent millions of dollars printing a glossy brochure and mailing it this week to 40 million Medicare beneficiaries detailing what Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called "the facts." But Republicans say the brochure is a "gross misuse of taxpayer funds to provide biased information for political purposes," the Washington Post reports.
The board of trustees of Washington, DC-based Sibley Memorial Hospital voted to enter negotiations with Johns Hopkins Medicine to integrate the two healthcare providers, a Sibley hospital spokeswoman said. Exactly how that integration will work will be negotiated over the next two to three months, Sibley spokeswoman Sheiliah Roy said. She said Sibley is not being sold, and that the non-profit 328-bed hospital will stay open. For patients, she said, that is likely to mean they will have easier access to Hopkins personnel.