Former executives of giant Triad Hospitals Inc. of Plano have joined forces to invest in struggling community hospitals and help them return to profitability. Legacy Hospital Partners, also of Plano, said Monday that it will use private equity financing to enter into partnerships and joint ventures with U.S. nonprofit hospitals, many of which are losing money and can't afford to invest in new facilities.
Thousands of prisoners and out-of-state residents are part of a group of 154,000 TennCare enrollees who can't legally be removed from the program, even though they do not meet eligibility requirements. Officials with TennCare to ask federal court sometime this week to make people in these group go through the same annual eligibility checks that are required of other enrollees. Disability advocates say the move could have dire consequences.
A pilot program to audit Medicare claims filed by hospitals and others in three states recouped nearly $250 million last year but is drawing fire from healthcare providers as it prepares to go national. The program, which relies on private-sector auditing firms to comb through past claims filed by providers, recovered $247.4 million for Medicare last year from medical providers in California, Florida and New York. Hospital groups have mounted a campaign against its expansion, saying the effort is "riddled with flaws" and suffered too many problems to expand.
A small but growing number of American families beset by major medical problems are learning that having health insurance is sometimes not enough. Those with costly chronic illnesses can easily rack up medical bills that blow through the lifetime benefits cap of $1 million or more that is a standard part of many insurance policies. That has left some very sick people facing healthcare tabs of hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.
Tenet Healthcare Corp. has entered into a new multiyear agreement with Blue Cross of California, Tenet's second-largest managed-care payer nationally. The contract, which takes effect Feb. 1, 2008, covers 16 acute-care hospitals in California. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The Charity Hospital System has raised an alarm that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's state government hiring freeze is impairing its effort to fill vacancies for more than 100 registered nurses and 200 other jobs in New Orleans to rebuild the public healthcare system. With patients waiting 120 days on average for primary care appointments and a patient load that has increased 24 percent in the past six months, Charity is pursuing an expansion plan that could come to a grinding halt if the hiring process is stymied, hospital officials said.