U.S. surgeons say they are seeing an influx of overseas patients who are taking advantage of the weak dollar to schedule cosmetic surgery. As a result, U.S. hospitals and prominent plastic surgeons have begun to tailor marketing campaigns targeted at Europeans, touting both their medical expertise as well as lower cost. Some U.S. plastic surgeons are promoting themselves through in-flight magazines.
Rising prices for cancer drugs are disrupting relationships with patients, causing doctors to go into debt, and threatening to interfere with treatment options. Driving the problem is a new generation of drugs that are transforming cancer care, providing oncologists with the first new options in decades for desperately ill patients. But several months of treatment on these drugs can equal the down payment on a home or a child’s college tuition.
Congress returns to work with Medicare high on the agenda and Senate Republicans under pressure after a barrage of radio and television advertisements blamed them for a 10.6% cut in payments to doctors who care for Medicare patients. How to pay doctors through the federal health insurance program is an issue that lawmakers are forced to confront every year because of what is widely agreed to be an outdated reimbursement formula. But the dispute showcases the continued potency of healthcare issues, which has reached a new level of urgency this year.
California's drug and alcohol diversion program for doctors has quietly ceased operation after 27 years. The now-defunct program for physicians was operated by the California Medical Board. California Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas has now authored a bill which would set uniform standards by January 2010 to monitor health professionals in treatment programs.
A jury has awarded the former director of neonatal intensive care at Kansas City-based Research Medical Center and Independence, MO-based Centerpoint Medical Center $4.95 million in a lawsuit over his termination. The jury found in favor of William H. Topper on his claims of wrongful interference and defamation against Research; Centerpoint; HCA Midwest Division, the owner of the hospitals; and HCA Physician Services, the HCA unit that employs physicians. Topper was awarded $1.1 million in compensatory damages and $2.1 million in punitive damages on the wrongful-interference claim. It awarded him an additional $1 million in compensatory damages and $750,000 in punitive damages on the defamation claim.
Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas has closed its inpatient psychiatric unit, eliminating nine beds reserved for mental-health patients. Advocates for mental-health patients say the loss of Baylor's psychiatric unit will exacerbate an already serious shortage of psychiatric hospital beds in Texas. However, a Baylor spokeswoman noted that the medical center's psychiatric unit had been underutilized, perhaps because of the growth of specialty psychiatric hospitals.