Once vilified for its stingy health benefits, Wal-Mart has become an unlikely leader in the effort to provide affordable care without bankrupting employers, their workers, or taxpayers in the process. At a time when other firms are scaling back or eliminating health coverage, Wal-Mart has made a serious dent in the problem of the uninsured. New figures show that 5.5% of its employees now lack health insurance, compared with a nationwide rate of 18%.
Brownsville Tri-County Hospital, a long-troubled 40-bed facility in Fayette County, PA, has finally closed. The board of directors surrendered the hospital's operating license to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which helped transfer the remaining 15 patients to other facilities. The 93-year-old hospital, which had closed once before, has been in tangled bankruptcy proceedings for four years and indicated earlier this month that it couldn't pay its 150 employees.
Despite insistence from Louisiana State University System officials that they have made a final decision to build a new academic medical complex New Orleans, opponents of the plan continue to lobby for an audience with Gov. Bobby Jindal and Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine. Their hope is to convince the governor and Levine that gutting and rebuilding Charity Hospital from within represents a better option for taxpayers, future medical students, and patients.
University of South Florida wants to build a freestanding, 100-bed, general acute-care hospital on its Tampa campus. USF disclosed its plan in a letter of intent to Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration, seeking a certificate of need to build the hospital. The proposed hospital would be adjacent to the Carol & Frank Morsani Center for Advanced Healthcare, a newly opened outpatient center on campus, and near the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute.
Uninsured or underinsured patients who receive basic medical care at East Hartford (CT) Community Care Inc. wait as long as nine months to see a specialist, and some never see one at all. Now a $50,000 state grant will allow the clinic to refer patients to specialists at the Eastern Connecticut Health Network and pay their consultation fees. If the partnership is successful, the program could be expanded, said state Sen. Mary Ann Handley. East Hartford Community Care officials said the money will pay for as many as 2,000 medical visits in 2009.
Boston-based Tufts Medical Center has won approval as a major trauma center, a designation that will change where ambulances take some of the region's most critically injured patients. Until now, Tufts has been the only major Boston teaching hospital not approved as an adult trauma center. As a result, ambulances carrying victims of car accidents, falls, or violence often bypassed that hospital for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, or Massachusetts General Hospital, all state-designated trauma centers. Some doctors at other Boston hospitals have argued that the city has enough trauma centers and that to spend several million dollars to open another one is a poor use of resources.