After a yearlong battle with preservationists, St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan has won approval from the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission for a slightly smaller version of a planned $830-million medical tower. The tower is a key component of the hospital's $1.63-billion, two-tower plan to modernize its facilities. The commissioners voted to issue a certificate of appropriateness that would permit the hospital to build a 19-story, 286-foot-tall medical building in the Greenwich Village Historic District.
India's Central government has granted the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) at Jhajjar permission to upgrade a health facility in Haryana. The government had previously provided 300 acres of land at Badsa Village for this purpose, and state government officials have already agreed to invest in the project.
New European Union laws allow member states to refuse public access to the disciplinary history of incompetent clinicians, subjecting patients to potentially "dangerous" doctors. The General Medical Council is now lobbying to persuade MEPs to make disclosure of such records automatic in health tourism.
Romania was ranked the second most corrupt country in the European Union last year by Transparency International, a Berlin-based anticorruption watchdog. Officials say this corruption is most prevalent in the country's socialized healthcare system, where graft and bribery have long been commonplace.
Not all medical errors are being reported to the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), established in 2001 to collect information on errors made by medical and other staff in the NHS. NHS officials are concerned about this trend—at least 10% of patients admitted to hospitals in England and Wales in recent years have sustained additional injuries or infections as a result of medical staff errors.
The global economic crisis has so far left Jordan's medical tourism industry untouched. In fact, according to the Private Hospitals Association, the country is currerntly ranked number one in the Arab world and among the top 10 in the world as a medical tourism destination. Officials say Jordan's high quality medical care, coupled with that care's competitive costs, make it an attractive destination for foreign patients.