California Medical Center have backed off plans to reduce San Francisco's St. Luke's Hospital to an outpatient hub, and instead have formed a panel charged with investigating ways to retain the facility's health services. Cal Pacific has faced intense criticism since publicizing plans in October to downgrade St. Luke's to an ambulatory center with a free-standing emergency room.
As health insurance costs continue to rise, some employers are adopting a controversial new approach that ends group coverage and gives employees $50 to $200 or so a month to help them buy their own. The shift is touted as a lower-cost way for employers to offer workers health coverage, while making smaller and more predictable financial contributions toward that coverage. If broadly adopted, the new model would represent a fundamental shift in health coverage.
A Clarksville, TN, health clinic geared toward assisting uninsured patients helped 226 patients during its first three weeks of operation, clinic officials said. Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Care's main clinic is in Nashville, and the Clarksville satellite clinic opened at the beginning of 2008.
Although the nation's hospitals have enjoyed steady and even improving finances in recent years, they could see some rough times ahead, according to a report from Moody's Investors Service.Moody's provides financial ratings and evaluates debt of the nation's nonprofit hospitals, and said its "stable" outlook for 2008 will be less certain in 2009 and 2010 should the economy take a turn for the worse.
Spending on a Massachusetts health insurance initiative would rise by more than $400 million in 2009 due primarily to projected growth in the number of people signing up for state-subsidized insurance, which now far exceeds earlier estimates. Although the price tag is ballooning, Gov. Deval Patrick has reaffirmed the state's commitment to ensuring that nearly every resident is covered.
A study has found that when women in Medicare managed-care plans were asked to contribute a small co-pay, 8 percent of the women decided to forgo mammograms altogether. Insurance plans are increasingly instituting cost-sharing in the form of co-pays with the hope that consumers will consider cost before getting healthcare services. Although the goal is that people will reconsider potentially unnecessary procedures or medicines but not forgo essential services, the study illustrates it does not always work out that way.