Independent community hospitals, which sprang up as religious, ethnic and charitable institutions, were once a hallmark of Greater Cleveland. Now, there are only a handful left as Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals have expanded their reach. Once-independent hospitals in more than a dozen communities are now part of the two systems, and hospital mergers and expansions like these have been happening across the country for more than a decade. They're fueled by the strength numbers give a system when negotiating contracts with health insurers or purchasing from suppliers. And urban hospitals look at the suburban partners with more privately insured patients as a feeder system to the main hospital.
New York City's Health and Hospitals Corporation has signed a 10-year, $100 million contract with a medical school in the Caribbean to provide clinical training for hundreds of students at the city's 11 public hospitals. The deal was proposed by a member of the corporation's board who has long worked for the Caribbean school, and has been met by an outcry from New York medical schools fearing that clerkship slots will grow scarcer and that they might have to increase tuitions to compete. Critics worry that the hospital corporation is conferring prestige on a foreign school whose curriculum, they say, is more vocational than research-based and often caters to affluent students who could not get into schools in the United States.
Despite UCLA Medical Center's warnings that it was cracking down on unauthorized access to medical records, the privacy of a "well-known individual" was breached by two nurses and an emergency room technician who called up the patient's computerized records in mid-April, according to a report by the California Department of Public Health. The report also found that nearly twice as many medical center employees as had previously been reported peeked at confidential medical records at UCLA. Nearly 60 additional employees gained improper access to records between January 2004 and June 2006, bringing the total number of workers implicated in the growing scandal to 127.
The University of Alabama Health System has hired William Ferniany as its new chief executive officer. Although he was an outside candidate, Ferniany is an Alabama native and UAB alumnus. Ferniany is currently associate vice chancellor and chief executive officer of University of Mississippi Hospitals and Health System, and will start his new job in September at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Mark W. Niedfeldt, MD, an associate professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin who is on the staff at several Milwaukee-area hospitals, is planning to open a concierge medical office in Mequon, WI. Niedfeldt is opening the concierge medical office—a practice in which doctors agree to see a limited number of patients—with help from Arizona-based start-up ModernMed Inc. Representatives from ModernMed Inc. said they believed Niedfeldt's practice would be the first primary care concierge medicine practice in the state of Wisconsin. ModernMed requires its doctors to commit to having no more than 500 patients a year, far fewer than the average of 2,300 a typical family doctor sees in a year, said the company's CEO.
Kaiser Permanente has donated $300,000 toward the $1.3 million construction of a new faith-based clinic in New Orleans. The recent donation adds to the more than $800,000 the New Orleans Faith Health Alliance has raised for the project so far. The clinic will offer various medical services, as well as preventative care and spiritual counseling, for those who generally cannot afford health insurance.