Since Pam Stephenson assumed the top role at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital, critics have said she lacks experience and qualifications and brings with her conflicts of interest. Some people have been pushing to oust her from Grady, and Georgia Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle said Stephenson is "obviously unqualified" and exercising "personal greed" in pursuit of the $600,000-a-year job.
Rather than stepping aside, however, Stephenson is poised to step up as a candidate in the national search for a permanent Grady CEO.
Congress is under pressure to remedy the national doctor shortage that could worsen on July 1, when physicians who treat Medicare patients get a 10 percent pay cut. Lawmakers want to stop the upcoming pay cut, and Congress is considering the Physician Shortage Elimination Act. The Act would spend millions to provide more scholarships for medical students and expand residency training programs throughout the country.
Critics say the proliferation of heart transplant centers in the Chicago area is unnecessary, enormously expensive and of questionable benefit. Chicago is tied with Philadelphia for having the most heart transplant programs for adults--five--of any city in the country. In this case competition appears to have backfired, leaving the Chicago heart transplant centers operating below capacity.
In this opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Jonathan Kellerman, MD, notes that most discussions about the rising cost of healthcare emphasize the need to get more people insured. But, Kellerman says, perhaps the solution to much of what currently plagues healthcare, such as rising costs and diminishing levels of service, rests on a different approach: fewer people insured.
A patient admissions representative at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center was charged in federal court in Manhattan with stealing nearly 50,000 patient files and selling some of them. The worker had access to a patient information database, and the stolen documents included patients' names, phone numbers and Social Security numbers. The complaint does not indicate what, if anything, the stolen identities were used for, and hospital officials are attempting to contact patients whose records were stolen.
As a group, doctors at UCLA hospitals who snooped through Britney Spears' medical files got off lighter than other staffers, according to reports from California health inspectors. At least 53 UCLA staffers--including 14 physicians--looked at Spears' medical records on the two occasions, even though they were not treating her. Eighteen non-doctors resigned, retired or were dismissed after their prying was discovered, but none of the physicians involved quit or were fired.