Texas Health Resources Inc. announced it has bought 40 acres in northern Tarrant County (TX) with plans to build a full-service hospital. The company will break ground on the hospital in the fall, with hopes of opening it in late 2011. The hospital will include an emergency room, outpatient and surgical services, physician offices and acute care inpatient beds to serve North Fort Worth, Saginaw, and Keller, the Dallas Morning News reports.
UConn's John Dempsey Hospital, which faced discipline from Connecticut regulators twice in 2008, has been removed from probation ahead of schedule. The Farmington, CT, hospital was placed on a two-year probation in November 2008 after regulators uncovered a number of problems, including one case in which a patient died. The probation terms called for the state Department of Public Health to review the hospital after a year and rescind the probation if the hospital "maintained substantial compliance with federal and state laws and regulations." Health department spokesman William Gerrish told the Hartford Courant the hospital met that condition, leading the department to end the probation.
Some married couples would pay thousands of dollars more for the same health insurance coverage as unmarried people living together under the health insurance overhaul plan pending in Congress, the Wall Street Journal reports. The disparity comes about in part because subsidies for purchasing health insurance under the plan from congressional Democrats are pegged to federal poverty guidelines. That has the effect of limiting subsidies for married couples with a combined income, compared to if the individuals are single, the Journal reports.
The White House supports an effort to tweak the health bill so it makes insurance more affordable for the lowest earners, but the change would drive up the cost of the overhaul, the Wall Street Journal reports. The White House is using the more moderate health bill passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve as the basis for a final bill, while adapting some provisions from the more liberal version the House passed Nov. 7, the Journal reports.
A doctor who had been repeatedly penalized by the Arkansas Medical Board was charged in federal court with planting a bomb that critically injured the board chairman as he left his home for a meeting of the panel last February. The indictment accused Randeep Singh Mann, MD, of employing "a weapon of mass destruction" in the attack on Trent P. Pierce, MD, a family practitioner, as Pierce approached his car in the driveway of his West Memphis, AK, home. Before the attack, the board had twice disciplined Mann for overprescribing drugs. In 2006 it stripped him of authority to prescribe drugs, effectively ending his practice.
Democratic leaders in Congress began a final round of healthcare talks, and pledged to overcome their remaining differences with the aim of sending a bill to President Obama before his State of the Union address in late January or early February, the Washington Post reports. The policy gaps to overcome include: The House's version of the bill would create a federally funded insurance option, while the Senate's would not; and the House would create a national insurance exchange, while the Senate would take a state-by-state approach to such a marketplace.