Advanced care for heart attack and other cardiac patients will continue to be offered in Waterbury, CT, the state's top hospital regulator has ruled. The Heart Center of Greater Waterbury has been threatened with closure since July, when its temporary state permit to operate expred. During its three-year trial period, the center had fallen short of performing the number of open heart surgeries required by the state to earn permanent approval. During a four-hour hearing in Hartford, patients, doctors, hospital administrators, and local officials pleaded for a six-month extension, arguing that patients would die if they had to travel from Waterbury to New Haven or Bridgeport for heart procedures.
Whistle-blowers helped authorities recover at least $9.3 billion from healthcare providers accused of defrauding states and the federal government, according to an analysis of Justice Department records. The Justice Department ramped up efforts in the 1990s to combat healthcare fraud by using private citizens with inside knowledge of wrongdoing, and they now initiate more than 90% of the department's lawsuits focusing on healthcare fraud.
Michael Young starts his job as head of Atlanta-based Grady Memorial Hospital on Sept. 2. Billed as talented, aggressive leader with a reputation for turning around troubled hospitals, Young is the latest in a string of CEOs at Grady, most of whom have quickly come and gone and left the hospital with little changed. But he comes to Grady having turned around a smaller hospital in western New York that had similar problems to those at Grady.
Novant Health officials will host a community forum to present their plans for a 47-bed acute care hospital in Holly Springs, NC. Local residents will have an opportunity to ask questions about the proposed $110 million project. Mark Billings, president of Novant's Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, and other officials from the hospital chain will be at the forum. Novant's bid to build a Holly Springs hospital has run into competition from Wake County's two largest hospitals, WakeMed and Rex Healthcare. Both have announced separate expansion plans for elsewhere in the county.
Health Management Associates, Inc. has appointed Vicki Romero Briggs as senior vice president and division CEO, responsible for HMA's North and South Carolina hospitals and the partnership in those hospitals between HMA and Winston Salem-based Novant Health.
HMA has also appointed Page H. Vaughan senior vice president and divisional CEO for HMA's Midwest City area hospital operations, including the Oklahoma Heart Hospital South Campus joint venture.
Marissa T. Peterson has been elected as a member of the board of directors at Humana Inc. Peterson, 46, was formerly executive vice president of worldwide operations, executive vice president of services and chief customer advocate for Sun Microsystems Inc. in Santa Clara, CA. She retired in 2005 after 17 years with the company.