After nearly a year of often negotiations, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez have settled on a plan to extend health insurance to 3.6 million uninsured Californians through a new tax on all employers and tobacco sales.
Consideration of a white retired CEO to lead the new hospital board of Grady Hospital in Atlanta has angered some black leaders. The leaders say it fuels suspicions that the white business community is trying to take over the hospital.
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell has announced he is probably going to allow doctors to put off payments to the state's medical-malpractice insurance fund as lawmakers work on legislation to extend a state subsidy that lowers those bills. The subsidy, which helps doctors pay for supplemental medical-malpractice insurance through a state-run fund, will end after Dec. 31, 2007 because no legislation has been passed to continue it.
The New Jersey legislature has passed the Safe Patient Handling Act, a bill meant to reduce injuries to hospital and nursing home employees and patients. The bill requires the healthcare facilities to develop plans to minimize manual lifting by employees.
Middle Tennessee Medical Center has received a final stamp of approval and a $10 million pledge construction of a new hospital. The hospital will break ground on the $268 million, 560,000-square-foot project in early 2008, and it is scheduled for completion by 2010.
HealthSouth Corp. and one of the nation's most prominent orthopedic surgeons have greed to pay almost $15 million to settle civil claims over what the government said was an illegal kickback scheme.