The University of Memphis is hosting a delegation of 19 healthcare officials from rural regions of China. The officials are spending three weeks in West Tennessee learning about American healthcare, particularly in rural areas. The visitors are part of a group of 50 from China who are in clusters across the state, seeking strategies to improve rural medicine. Tennessee officials also hope to learn how to handle some of the issues on the homefront from the Chinese.
In 2007, Thailand attracted 1.5 million medical tourists from around the world, attracting 80 billion Thai baht (approximately 2.48 billion U.S. dollars) in revenue. The massive number of medical tourists is thanks to Bangkok's efforts to nurture its medical industry and make Thailand Asia's medical hub. The target for 2010 is two million medical tourists.
A new study has found that if each medical school adds a rural training program, they would more than double the number of new graduates going into rural practice. The study's authors reviewed outcomes of programs designed to increase the rural physician supply and developed a model to estimate the impact of widespread replication. The study defined rural programs as those that focused admissions on candidates with a rural background or had an extended rural clinical curriculum of six months or longer. The study estimated that if each of the 125 allopathic medical schools committed 10 seats per class to rural training, the schools would produce 1,139 new rural doctors a year, or 11,390 physicians over a decade.
A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling by the Federal Trade Commission that North Texas Specialty Physicians, a group of about 600 doctors, engaged in unlawful price-fixing in its negotiations with various health insurers. In September 2003, the FTC issued a complaint accusing the doctors group of anti-competitive practices that raised the price of healthcare in the region. The commission argued that the North Texas doctors had broken the law by negotiating contracts collectively and by inappropriately polling participating physicians ahead of time about what fees they deemed acceptable.
Florida Hospital has signed a contract with Radiology Specialists of Florida, which is a new addition to the Adventist Health System subsidiary Florida Physicians Medical Group. Adventist Health is Florida Hospital's parent company, and the exclusive contract covers Florida Hospital's seven Florida campuses and five outpatient offices.
The Lousiana Legislature is nearing final passage on a package of bills designed to protect medical personnel from lawsuits that stem from healthcare delivered during emergencies. Two of the measures are inspired and backed by a New Orleans physician who was arrested but never indicted and still faces civil lawsuits related to patient deaths at Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina. The bills would provide lawsuit protections for paid medical professionals not covered under the Samaritan Act, which offers immunity from civil lawsuits for providers who voluntarily offer their care to an emergency victim in need.