Lawrenceville-based Gwinnett Medical Center has applied to Georgia health planners for approval to begin an open-heart surgery program. According to Georgia law, the hospital must obtain a certificate of need from the Department of Community Health before it can proceed with plans for the center, which would be the only open-heart surgery center in its county.
The financially failing Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta has been dealt a body blow, as Fulton County has voted to cut $24 million from the medical center's 2007 funding level. Grady officials say the reduction could cut into patient services and staffing at a medical center already slashed to the bone and in danger of losing its accreditation.
After state regulators cleared the way for store-based medical clinics, CVS Corp. said it plans to open more than two dozen inside Massachusetts drugstores in 2008. With the ruling in place, other pharmacy chains and retail stores, as well as hospitals and community health centers, could also open limited service clinics. The council did insist on strict patient safety provisions and required that each clinic be individually licensed by state overseers.
A federal appeals court has given San Francisco the green light to require employers to help pay for healthcare for uninsured workers and residents. The court also signaled that it is likely to uphold the city's groundbreaking universal coverage law, making it more likely that a proposed state healthcare law will survive any legal challenge.
A highly trained team of insurance experts is sequestered behind locked doors. They are fed and watered twice a day to keep them lean and mean. They are the real power brokers behind what gets paid vs. what gets denied. They determine, through a detailed mathematical equation that would stump Sir Isaac Newton, that due to their specialty, demographics and other physicians in the same ZIP code, your doctor should get paid a certain amount. More than likely it's about one-third of his original bill. Physicians have no control over this system; they either accept what is paid or they are dropped from the insurance plan. Most feel what they have lost on a per-patient basis they can make up for in volume.
Lawmakers are stalling in providing a plan to offer health care coverage for the estimated 790,000 uninsured people in Colorado. Although it's a top priority for the legislature this session, neither Republicans nor Democrats seem ready to hit taxpayers up for a major health care reform package on the November ballot. At the end of this month, the legislature will hear five proposals--from requiring Coloradans to buy health insurance or pay a tax penalty, to creating a single nonprofit insurance program for all residents. Covering children alone would cost an extra $200 million per year, according to one legislative estimate.