Federal health experts are optimistic they will be able to reduce excessive deaths at an Afghan maternity hospital where a U.S. medical training program is under congressional investigation. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the program, plans to send teams of obstetric and pediatric experts to Rabia Balkhi Hospital in Kabul to begin working alongside Afghan doctors to bolster their training.
Doctors who care for poor children in New Jersey are getting their first increase in Medicaid rates in two decades, and reimbursements will more than triple. The increases were possible because the governor set aside an extra $10 million in state money last summer for Medicaid reimbursements for pediatric healthcare providers in 2008, and it will be matched by $10 million in federal funding.
Free drug samples are more likely to go to wealthy and insured people than to poor or uninsured Americans, according to a study by Boston-area doctors. The findings conflicts with the view that giving away prescription medications forms a safety net for low-income patients.
As legislative leaders in Prince George, MD, return to the capital, they say that a long-term solution for Dimension Health is at the top of their priority list. Dimensions Health, the county's troubled hospital system, has been losing money and on the edge of closure for years. Last year, a deal between state and local leaders on a plan to create a hospital authority that would take over from Dimensions fell apart on the final day of the session.
The escape of Kelvin D. Poke from Laurel (MD) Regional Hospital prompted scrutiny of how prisoners are guarded in hospitals. Poke's was the second escape from Laurel Regional Hospital since November, and the two incidents have rattled the Prince George's County Council member who represents Laurel, and led a correctional officers union representative to call for keeping guns out of hospitals.
Obstetrician Jodie Rai has partnered with researcher Robert Kokenyesi to form Cervimark LLC, based at the Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise incubator in Creve Coeura, MO. Cervimark aims to develop a test that will predict which women are likely to deliver at less than 37 weeks of pregnancy, the definition of a pre-term birth. If Cervimark succeeds, its test would allow doctors to intervene in the limited ways available to them--by moving rural patients closer to hospitals with neonatal intensive care units, for example--and would identify a group of patients who could be tapped as volunteers for clinical trials in the development of new and better treatments.