Egypt hopes to boost its tourism earnings by 26 percent to 12 billion dollars by 2011, said Tourism Minister Zuheir Garana. Egypt wants to attract private investors to fund the ambitious plan which also includes developing eco-tourism and medical tourism, limiting the government's role to supervision and planning, the minister said.
Before Ruben Toral arrived in 2001 as Bumrungrad International's marketing director, "we were a Thai hospital serving a Thai community," he says. "Now we're an international hospital that just happens to be in Thailand." Overseas patients have more than doubled on his watch, generating the majority of the privately owned hospital's revenue. Bumrungrad was arguably a world-class hospital even before it became a world-famous one-administrators have spent the past 15 years acquiring state-of-the-art technology, adding beds, and wooing Thai doctors abroad to come home.
A McKinsey survey shows that almost 70% of executives around the world say that global social, environmental, and business trends are increasingly important to corporate strategy. However, relatively few companies act on the global trends they think will affect them most, the survey found. Among those that do act, only 17% report significant benefits, and one reason might be underinvestment in trends.
A new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows concerns over rising healthcare costs have kept pace with other major economic worries. The survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 44% of the more than 2,000 adults interviewed April 3 to 13 ranked paying for gas as a serious problem, compared with 29% for jobs and 28% for healthcare. The poll shows that healthcare remains in the forefront of Americans' concerns despite the mortgage crisis and growing overall economic woes, said experts.
Federal law stipulates that every patient or a designated representative has the right to see and copy the patient's medical records. But missing or disputed records are the most common source of complaints on USA Today's Patient Safety website, which was created to give readers a venue to express concerns about inadequate medical care. Disputes over medical records often are at the crux of malpractice lawsuits as well. Even when records are provided, they sometimes are obscured, experts say.
Somerville (MA) hospital's intensive care unit will be closed, surgery will be performed only between 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., and the Somerville Transitional Care Unit will be closed, according to a report. The hospital's curtailing of services comes as the healthcare system it belongs to faces financial problems. Somerville Hospital is part of publicly funded Cambridge Health Alliance, a group facing a potential loss of $25 million to $35 million for the year.