A recent Gallup poll offered a dozen separate ways to expand health insurance coverage. Each suggestion garnered majority support, including tax breaks for small businesses, requiring large companies to offer health coverage or pay into a pool, and federal subsidies for the poor. Despite the variety of answers, the implication was clear: The public wants change.
Since 2000, UnitedHealth has been sanctioned in nine states for paying claims slowly, shortchanging doctors, hospitals or patients or poorly handling their complaints and appeals. The payment problems related to an array of medical care, from ER visits to specialist referrals to oral surgery on children.
Even as the community rallies to save Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, the 115-year-old facility could run out of money by the end of 2007. The hospital is expecting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, but that money may not arrive for months, and some may not arrive at all.
Loyola University Health System is interested in acquiring Gottlieb Health Resources of Melrose Park, IL, for $100 million, and is considering maintaining the 46-year-old institution as a general purpose hospital. Loyola operates a major hospital and medical center in Maywood, IL, with satellite clinics and medical services around suburban Chicago.
Brockton (MA) Hospital has gone regional, creating a system of primary care physicians and medical centers to form a new, larger healthcare provider. The hospital and its parent company, Brockton Hospital Corp., will now be known as Signature Healthcare.
Greater Southeast Community Hospital in Washington, DC, had its national accreditation yanked because of the overwhelming problems that pushed the facility close to collapse for much of 2007. Eric Rieseberg, president of Greater Southeast ownwer Specialty Hospitals of America, said he does not expect reimbursement from Medicare or Medicaid to be at risk.