Phoebe Putney Health System doesn’t want its doctors to send business to competitors. If they do, Phoebe makes sure their bosses know about it. Doctors working for the Albany, Ga.-based hospital system’s affiliated physician group get regular reports breaking down their referrals to specialists or services.
A D.C. Superior Court judge Thursday denied the District’s request for a temporary restraining order to stop Providence Hospital from shutting down most of its services. The city’s oldest continuously operating hospital, owned by Missouri-based Ascension, began reducing operations last week.
A Legionnaires’ disease outbreak at a hospital in Wisconsin has killed three people, a hospital official confirmed to Fox News. A UW Hospital spokeswoman, Lisa Brunette, told Fox News in a statement Thursday that there have been 14 confirmed cases of the disease. Of those 14, three people died.
When it comes to improving the nation’s broken system of doctor discipline, many advocates say the starting point should be fixing something that was created to do the job in the first place. In 1986, Congress created the National Practitioner Data Bank, pledging it would improve health care and reduce fraud and abuse. The data bank records all sorts of things: malpractice payments, disciplinary action, restrictions of hospital privileges and other transgressions.
As many of us get ready to spend Christmas with family, doctors in North Texas are seeing a spike in flu cases. We are in the beginning of flu season but over the past week, doctors in Dallas say they've seen a “significant increase” in the number of positive flu cases. At Trusted ER Hillcrest near the SMU Campus, out of about 40 patients tested for the flu in the past few days, 35 have come back positive.
A recent Gallup poll notes that three in 10 Americans delayed seeking medical care due to cost — a true testament as to why America needs to solve its health-care access crisis. The notion that approximately 19 percent of all U.S. adults delayed treatment for serious or somewhat serious conditions or illness carries serious consequences particularly for diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and a myriad of other acute and chronic conditions that may be amenable to early diagnosis and treatment.