Judith Persichilli has been tapped to lead Catholic Health East, a health system based in Newtown Square, PA. Persichilli told the Philadelphia Inquirer that there will be more focus on technology and electronic medical records. The system also will expand efforts to improve the health of populations of patients, to work jointly with physicians when contracting with insurers, and to provide care across the whole continuum from primary care through hospitalization. Catholic Health East includes 34 acute-care hospitals as well as nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and home health and hospice agencies.
Officials from the Cook County (IL) Health and Hospitals System and other agencies have begun offering outplacement services to the hundreds of workers facing layoffs in the coming month. In October, more than 600 vacant posts and 335 filled spots were eliminated from the healthcare system. The layoffs are expected to begin sometime in January. The services will include information about job training and benefits.
A for-profit healthcare company from Tennessee has agreed to purchase Ottumwa, IA's hospital. The sale of Ottumwa Regional Health Center would make it the only sizable Iowa hospital to be run as a for-profit business, the Des Moines Register reports. The Tennessee company, RegionalCare Hospital Partners, intends to make the 217-bed Ottumwa facility its first hospital. The company is led by industry veterans who used to run a large healthcare chain, and said they want to add more hospitals.
GlaxoSmithKline has become the latest big pharma company to disclose payments to healthcare providers, listing 3,700 U.S. doctors and others who received a total of $14.6 million in speaking and consulting fees during the second quarter. Glaxo limits payments to an individual physician to $150,000 a year; the average payment in the report was $3,909. In 2010, it plans to expand what it discloses, the Wall Street Journal Health Blog reports.
A Fulton County (GA) Superior Court judge said he will dismiss the lawsuit by patients trying to force Atlanta-based Grady Memorial Hospital to reopen its outpatient dialysis clinic, according to a lawyer in the case. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of about 50 patients who are needy illegal immigrants. The patients and advocates said the closing of the clinic violated their constitutional right to the healthcare service. The patients also said that the closure represented medical abandonment.
Nearly a million doses of swine flu vaccine for infants may have been slightly less potent than required but should work anyway, federal officials said in announcing a recall of the shots. The maker of the vaccine, Sanofi-Aventis, voluntarily recalled 800,000 doses of low-dose, thimerosal-free vaccine in prefilled syringes intended for infants ages 6 months to 35 months. Since most of the vaccine was released a month ago, it presumably has already been used, but the recall is intended to alert doctors to return any supplies they have left, the New York Times reports.