MaineGeneral Medical Center filed a Certificate of Need application with the state for a new regional, inpatient hospital in north Augusta. The hospital has also applied for permission to update its Thayer Campus in Waterville. MaineGeneral currently operates two inpatient facilities, in Augusta and Waterville, and hospital officials say that set up is no longer viable. MaineGeneral Health President and CEO Scott Bullock said consolidating the two inpatient facilities at one hospital in north Augusta will help MaineGeneral attract top doctors, and operate more efficiently, decreasing the total number of beds from 287 to 226. The Thayer Campus would remain a fully-occupied outpatient hospital, with a 24-hour, seven-day emergency department, officials said. The estimated cost of the project is $322 million.
Pandemic influenza vaccine is getting much easier to find, but more than half of American adults say they still don't want it, and one-third of parents say they don't want their children to get it either, according to two surveys. As of this week, 111 million doses of vaccine against the pandemic strain of H1N1 flu have been released to states and cities. Not all of it has been used. There have been no unusual or unexpected vaccine side effects reported. As of Dec. 12, 11 states reported "widespread" flu activity (as measured by office visits, hospitalizations, and other indicators), down from 14 the week before. During the last two weeks of October, in comparison, 48 states reported widespread activity.
The Senate cleared the second of three key procedural hurdles on President Obama's healthcare legislation early Tuesday with another party-line vote, continuing the effort to pass the bill before Christmas. All 60 members of the Democratic caucus supported the measure to finalize amendments to the healthcare package, while 39 Republicans opposed it. A third procedural vote is expected Wednesday, with final passage of the bill likely to come late on Christmas Eve.
This year has been an eventful one for healthcare as the nation's attention has focused on the problems with the current system and possible ways to improve quality of care, lower costs, and insure more Americans. In addition to healthcare reform, health leaders have faced a difficult economy and greater government scrutiny. All of these issues are represented in our top 10 articles of 2009.
With a healthcare overhaul inching closer to reality, Democrats looking to next year's midterm elections plan to market the bill as a way to help voters who are focused more on unemployment and the economy. The chances of passing healthcare legislation rose significantly Monday, with a Senate vote that put it on track to clear the chamber by Christmas. A sour public mood may make matters tough for Democrats, whose comfortable congressional majority will be at risk. Party leaders hope to minimize concerns that many of the health bill's provisions would not take effect until 2014. That is when, for example, a new health insurance marketplace would open, with the goal of making it easier for consumers to find policies. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are compiling lists of "immediate benefits" that would spring from passage of the bill, which still must emerge from the Senate and be reconciled with a version approved by the House.
The abortion language that was added to the Senate's healthcare bill to win the vote of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) has achieved a rare feat: It is drawing contempt from both sides. That could be taken as a sign that senators finally found an elusive compromise on a thorny issue. But serious questions are already being raised about how the new language would work in practice and whether it would even be feasible to implement. The long-standing ban on federal funding for abortion has complicated congressional Democrats' healthcare legislation. Medicaid bars federal funding for abortion, but 17 states and the District of Columbia allow the procedure for female Medicaid enrollees paid out of their own funds. It is harder to reach middle ground in the bill before Congress, which would provide federal subsidies to millions of people to buy private health insurance plans on a new marketplace, or "exchange."