Officials with Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital may seal a separation agreement with their embattled CEO on the same day they expect to name a new chief executive. News that Grady is close to a deal with CEO Pam Stephenson comes days after a top Grady official said negotiations had bogged down. There has been controversy over Stephenson's two-year, $600,000-a-year contract, which some officials called a secret sweetheart deal. Several state and local officials have taken exception to the prospect she could receive a severance package worth $750,000, a provision that has been a major sticking point in negotiating her departure.
A nationwide network to collect data on blood transfusion and recipient outcomes will include four metro Atlanta hospitals at its launch. Proponents of the network say that analysis of the data will help ensure patient and donor safety, as well as lower healthcare costs. A deeper data pool would also help the network find trends and recommend treatments to reduce disease and mortality rates for patients and donors, they added.
Inflation is racing through the economy at a pace not seen in years, and medical manufacturers, distributors, and hospitals all are coping with rising prices. From the thousands of gloves used each day to plastic bed pans, blood bags, syringes, and tubing used for delivering medications to patients, prices for many everyday medical products are rising because they rely on petroleum. Now healthcare companies are making crucial decisions about whether to raise customer prices or hang tough and eat the higher costs to protect relationships or fend off competitors.
A state task force is examining why the use of hospital emergency rooms in Maine is significantly higher than the national average. Unnecessary use of emergency room services drives up healthcare spending in the state, and a number of hospitals are seeking approval to expand their emergency departments, said Maine officials.
A new study has found that the odds of surviving cancer depend on which country the patient lives in. Factors such as economic differences among countries, access to healthcare, and the availability of cancer treatments feed the disparities in survival, the report said. The study also confirms the disparity in cancer survival among blacks and whites in the United States, said the study's authors.
After President Bush sought to block a bill aimed at forestalling an 11% cut in payments to doctors taking care of Medicare patients, Congress quickly overrode his veto. The House voted 383 to 41 for the override, while the Senate voted 70 to 26. Both cases were far more than the two-thirds necessary to block the veto. At issue in this bill was how the government should respond to a planned reduction in Medicare doctors’ fees, mandated by a formula that requires the cuts if certain spending targets are not reached. Under the formula, a 10.6% cut in fees for doctors was supposed to go into effect, but Congress voted instead to reduce the reimbursement to insurance companies that serve Medicare beneficiaries under its managed-care program.