California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has pledged to work with Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez and representatives of two dozen interest groups to salvage a plan to reform the state's ailing healthcare system. Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, however, said he will not revive the healthcare bill, which the Senate Health Committee rejected by a 7-1 vote.
Grady Memorial Hospital's board has ousted chief executive Otis Story , effective immediately, and his position will be filled temporarily by the Atlanta hospital board's chairwoman, state Rep. Pam Stephenson. The decision to fire Story apparently was made following the Grady board's vote to approve a long-discussed plan to transfer power over hospital policy from the Grady board to a nonprofit corporation. Stephenson said she will temporarily give up her law practice to become a full-time executive for Grady.
Loyola University Health System has announced that it will take over the 250-bed Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park, IL, as well as related facilities on the hospital's campus. Loyola's $90 million merger with Gottlieb will result in an extension of Loyola's more specialized care to the Gottlieb Memorial and fill Gottlieb's unused beds, said Loyola representatives.
Should a murderer ever be allowed to practice medicine? The question has come into focus in the case of a Nazi sympathizer who entered a famed Swedish medical school in 2007, seven years after being convicted of a hate murder. A killer turned healer might seem to be a shining example of prison rehabilitation. Yet it is hard to think of a case in which a murderer should become a medical doctor. Murder and medical practice are simply incompatible.
The nation's largest pediatricians' group said ABC should cancel the first episode of a new series, "Eli Stone," because it perpetuates the myth that vaccines can cause autism. The show's co-creators say they're not anti-vaccine and would be upset if parents chose not to immunize their children after seeing the show.
Cold medicines send about 7,000 children to hospital emergency rooms each year, according to a new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its first national estimate of the problem. About two-thirds of the cases were children who took the medicines unsupervised. However, about one-quarter involved cases in which parents gave the proper dosage and an allergic reaction or some other problem developed, the CDC reports. The study included both over-the-counter and prescription medicines.