Internet entrepreneurs are teaming with doctors, researchers, and other medical professionals to create the Web's largest body of health information. Modeled on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, but written and edited only by trained professionals, the Medpedia Project will gather knowledge usually confined to academic circles but make it understandable and available to consumers. The website will be officially launched at year's end.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has launched an investigation into the failures that allowed problem employees from Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Medical Center to continue working in violation of county policies. Acting Auditor-Controller Wendy L. Watanabe was ordered to complete within four weeks an investigation that will identify those responsible for the flawed oversight of the problem employees and to recommend reform. But the supervisors acknowledged that any reforms that improve the tracking of employees would not necessarily be in place before the county moves forward on a long-delayed downsizing of hospital staff in August.
Texas-based health insurer HealthMarkets Inc. will pay $20 million to at least 29 states to settle allegations it misled consumers and mishandled claims. The agreement resolves a multistate examination that insurance regulators started in 2005 because of many consumer complaints. The multi-state exam found problems involving disclosures to consumers, oversight and training of agents, claims handling, and complaint handling. Consumers complained they were mislead about what benefits were covered by their health policies
The Connecticut Health Reinsurance Association will receive a $1.18 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services for fiscal year 2008. HHS awarded more than $49 million to 30 states to help them run their high-risk insurance pools, which are designed for individuals who cannot buy policies elsewhere because of serious medical conditions. The grant money can be used to support disease management programs for chronic conditions and subsidize premiums for people with lower incomes.
Lawyers for HCA Inc. and a partnership of Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Maury Regional Hospital are set to square off before a state agency over rival proposals to offer radiation therapy services in Spring Hill, TN. Each applicant opposes the other's $7 million-plus project. The Vanderbilt-Maury partnership doesn't believe there's room for both, while HCA believes both should be approved but doesn't want the rival proposal alone to be approved by Tennessee's Health Services and Development Agency.
A growing number of Americans are leaving the country for weight-loss surgery. They leave not just because it's cheaper, but because U.S. standards governing the surgery mean that for tens of thousands of overweight men and women, the procedure is not available in the United States. Most return home healthy and on their way to significant weight loss, but some experience serious complications.