To cut costs while improving the experience for patients, some hospitals are adopting cutting-edge business tactics to improve their processes. For example, efficiency experts are sweeping through Boston-area hospitals, bringing cutting-edge business school methodologies to healthcare providers.
A Senate health committee is expected to vote against California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's widely promoted bill on universal healthcare. A "no" vote would effectively kill the bill, which would also need voter approval to become law. The bill, which would offer coverage to millions of uninsured Californians, passed the State Assembly but began to stall in the Senate after the state's legislative analyst raised questions about its financing and two prominent Democrats announced they would vote against it.
Diabetes-related medical and economic costs in the United States hit $174 billion in 2007, a 32 percent increase from 2002, according to a study commissioned by the American Diabetes Association. The research, found medical care costs for people with diabetes were about $116 billion, and a disproportionate percentage of those costs resulted from the treatment and hospitalization of people with diabetes-related complications.
Kenneth A. Samet is the new president and CEO of MedStar Health, a seven-hospital system in the Baltimore-Washington, DC, region where he has career-long ties. Samet and others believe he is taking over MedStar at a time when health systems will be growing again, in size and in importance. Several systems such as MedStar lost money during recent years when hospital rates were squeezed. "I'm proud of building the MedStar of today, but any time you have new leadership you get an opportunity to bring new focus," Samet told the Baltimore Sun.
Litigation and high medical malpractice insurance rates are threatening access to healthcare in central and Southern Illinois, according U.S. Senate candidate and physician Steve Sauerberg. Sauerberg said many health professionals have retired or this region of Illinois because of litigation and high insurance costs, and added the area stands to lose even more in the future. He has introduced a health plan that includes establishing an administrative hearing process for malpractice claims.
The Bush administration is proposing the first changes in more than a decade to regulations that give workers unpaid leave to deal with family or medical emergencies, a move that concerns some of the law's supporters who want to see it expanded. The Labor Department announced that it had sent the first proposed changes to regulations governing the Family and Medical Leave Act to the White House's Office of Management and Budget for approval.