A growing amount of research is investigating whether small cultural differences--most of them between white, male doctors and their diverse patients--could be a big reason for the nation's persistent healthcare disparities. New Jersey became the first state to require cultural-competence education for physicians to get licenses. California requires continuing medical education for doctors to include cultural and linguistic competency training.
Carolinas Medical Center is seeking regulatory approval to renovate four Caesarian-section rooms, eight of 20 delivery rooms and 31 of 72 postpartum rooms. The proposed $13.2 million project also would add three delivery rooms. In addition, the facility is seeking approval to transfer maternity services from four locations to the eighth floor of the hospital in midtown Charlotte.
The University of South Florida medical school wants to build its own teaching hospital to recruit more high-profile faculty members, increase the number of its residents and generate revenue. A bill filed for the upcoming legislative would allow USF to build a hospital on its campus without getting key permission from state regulators. USF medical school is one of the few medical schools in America that doesn't have its own hospital, said a Florida legislator who sponsored the bill.
Despite possible competition from a planned hospital in Poinciana, the Heart of Florida Regional Medical Center in Davenport is continuing to expand. Heart of Florida will add a fourth and fifth floor to increase its services and number of beds to keep up with the rapidly growing population in Polk County. The fourth floor alone will make way for more surgery rooms and add more than 100 new beds. It is scheduled to open in August 2008.
Tenet Healthcare Corp. is asking patients nationwide to watch for credit fraud since police arrested an employee for stealing patient information. The former employee worked in Tenet's billing office in Frisco, Texas, where he had access to 40,000 of the office's 4 million accounts. He was arrested Nov. 25, 2007, when he tried to open a Costco credit card using a state ID with fraudulent information, police said.
North Carolina leaders are vowing to pay for hospital tests done on patients examined for sexual assault. Under the state's current system, hospitals bill a patient's private insurer for a rape exam. The state sets aside about $258,000 a year to help cover rape kit exams for uninsured people. Reimbursements, however, are capped at $1,000, even though the average bill tops $1,600. While some hospitals forgive the balance, others do not.