Despite a push in Congress aimed at cracking-down on physician-owned hospitals, doctors who own a medical center and eight outlying clinics in central Washington state will not sell. Instead, the more than 150 doctor-owners of the Wenatchee Valley Medical Center are considering forming their own nonprofit group or merging with an already-established entity.
It takes an average of 934 days from the receipt of a complaint to the completion of judicial review, according to Medical Board of California's most recent annual report. The length of time it takes to resolve complaints has been increasing overall during the last decade, and the Medical Board has been criticized because of the long waits.
The board for Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta has announced the long-awaited appointment of a 17-member board charged with pulling the hospital out of a financial mire that threatened its existence. The heads of some of metro Atlanta's top businesses and institutions will serve on the board of the new private, nonprofit Grady Memorial Hospital Corporation, along with some members of the old Grady board.
By going to the Tennessee Department of Health's Web site, people can find out if the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners has taken action against a doctor, why and what the outcome was. They also can find other information to help them choose a doctor, such as where they attended school, which hospitals they can practice in and whether they have a criminal record. The link got 6.8 million hits in 2007--making it one of the most popular in all of the state government.
Peter A. Kouides, MD, a hematologist at Rochester (NY) General Hospital, said he once had a patient with Gaucher disease who declined to be treated with a drug made by Genzyme. For years, Genzyme's representatives were always asking the hospital about why they were not treating the patient, he says. While most pharmaceutical makers do not even know the identities of most of the people taking their drugs, Genzyme knows virtually everyone with Gaucher disease. As a result, some critics say Genzyme influences treatment to an unusual extent and encourages the use of high doses of its drug.
The largest union of nurses in New York City is voicing dismay that contracts at four large hospitals have expired without a new agreement being reached. The nurses believe that the hospitals--St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan, St. Luke's-Roosevelt hospitals and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia--should be generous in their contract offers in light of the nationwide nursing shortage. Michael Fraser, a spokesman for the Healthcare Association of New York State, said it was hard for hospitals to pay nurses more even though the nursing shortage was expected to grow worse.