Sg2 Senior Vice President Bill Woodson says it is impossible to overlook the growing shortage of primary care capacity in both urban and rural markets. As a result, the retail clinic model can help us manage some primary care needs and the inevitable access challenges that emerge as we develop mechanisms to expand the ranks of the insured over the next 5 five years, he says.
A federal jury has convicted two Miami-Dade doctors and two medical assistants of plotting to submit millions of dollars in bogus bills to Medicare. The 12-person jury found David Rothman, MD, Keith Russell, MD, Eda Marietta Milanes, and Jorge Luis Pacheco guilty of conspiring to commit fraud and other charges for filing $5.3 million in false HIV-therapy claims with the nation's healthcare program.
The White House, seeking to engender political support for a healthcare overhaul later this year, brought its traveling health policy forum to Vermont on Tuesday. Governor Jim Douglas of Vermont, a Republican, and Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, a Democrat, co-hosted a forum with about 400 people on the frontlines of healthcare about how to make sweeping changes to the existing system. The doctors, patients, business people, and government officials repeatedly emphasized similar themes: the need to prevent and manage chronic disease better, attract more primary care doctors, simplify bureaucracy, and find a way to get everyone access to treatment at an affordable price.
Terminally ill cancer patients who drew comfort from religion were far more likely to seek aggressive, life-prolonging care in the week before they died than were less religious patients and far more likely to want doctors to do everything possible to keep them alive, a study has found. The devout patients were three times as likely as less religious ones to be put on a mechanical ventilator to maintain breathing during the last week of life, and they were less likely to do any advance care planning, the analysis found.
An NHS watchdog has found that Stafford Hospital's "appalling" emergency care prompted the deaths of hundreds of patients between 2005 and 2008. According to the Healthcare Commission, deficiencies were discovered in nearly every stage of emergency care at the facility, as managers pursued targets at the detriment of patient care. Among mistakes found to be made at the hospital was the regular use of receptionists to conduct initial checks on patients.
Government officials in Ghana plan to upgrade and further develop healthcare facilities to ultimately make the West Africa Sub Region a "medical center of excellence." To do so, new equipment will be brought in to the facilities, which will also help to ensure quality patient care. In addition, the region's Central Regional Hospital will be developed into a medical tourism center, extending services to neighboring countries and beyond.