As congressional Democrats attempt to arrive at a final healthcare bill, they appear increasingly likely to forgo the formal conference committee process for merging House and Senate versions of legislation, instead opting for closely held negotiations between leaders from the two chambers, the Chicago Tribune reports. Under that scenario, the House would be likely to amend the Senate bill before sending that bill back to the Senate for a vote.
Though Atlanta-based Grady Memorial Hospital has contracted with a clinic to provide free dialysis care for patients until September, the hospital continues to push patients to find their own care and has set another deadline to stop treatments. Grady had initially told patients it was closing its outpatient dialysis clinic in October. The hospital then told patients they would have three more months to find care elsewhere. During that time, Grady has paid for their treatments at an outside provider. That three-month deadline arrived Jan. 4, but the hospital again shifted the deadline—this time to Feb. 3.
Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital will pay nearly $1 million to settle False Claim act violations, U.S. Attorney James Jacks said. The hospital was suspected of submitting false Medicare claims, but in the settlement it neither admits wrongdoing or liability in the case. In August 2007, Arlington Memorial Hospital disclosed to the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services that one of its contracts with a physicians group potentially violated federal law, Jacks said in a statement.
The Medical Board of California has accused a Beverly Hills fertility doctor of a pattern of gross negligence that led to the birth of Nadya Suleman's 14 children, including the world's longest-surviving octuplets, and created a "stockpile" of unused frozen embryos which serve "no clinical purpose," the Los Angeles Times reports. Michael Kamrava, MD, transferred an excessive number of embryos—a number beyond what is considered acceptable by fertility standards—on six occasions, according to the accusation.
The Medical Council of India, the group that sets the standards for the nation's doctors, recently updated its ethics rules to bar doctors from accepting "any gift from any pharmaceutical or allied healthcare industry and their sales people or representatives." That includes payment for transportation or accommodation, the rules state.
The South Florida Hospital and Healthcare Association elected Anthony M. Degina Jr. chairman during the organization's annual meeting. Degina is the CEO of the University of Miami Hospital. He has 25 years of healthcare experience and was with HCA for more than 16 years. Degina has served as the CEO of Cedars Medical Center, CEO of Plantation General Hospital for 10 years, and five years at Deering Hospital.