The city of New Orleans could spend nearly $80 million for land that will accommodate a new veterans hospital. Officials are eyeing a site just north of the downtown region where a number of houses currently sit. The city committed to the project last year, and plans to use Community Development Block Grants to help fund it.
A Stillwater, MN, hospital's expansion is on hold until the economy improves, as its leaders have decided to wait until January or February to ask the city council to approve the first two phases of their plans. Construction cost estimates for the four-phase project now are about 15 percent higher than expected, said Jeff Robertson, CEO of Lakeview Health System, the hospital's parent company. In addition, some indicators throughout the healthcare industry suggest a slight slowdown in the number of people who have elective surgeries, Robertson said.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich administration's decision to stop paying for most state-subsidized healthcare is up for discussion in Cook County Circuit Court. A hearing is set after the governor asked a judge to clarify an order to shut down an illegal expansion of the FamilyCare program. Court documents indicate state reimbursement to doctors stopped Oct. 15, the day a Cook County judge ordered the administration to stop an expansion of the program to people with higher incomes.
A group of large healthcare companies is trying to create a common set of security practices, but it remains to be seen whether they can persuade businesses in the fragmented industry to join their effort. Healthcare providers are required by law to safeguard the data they collect about patients, but the laws don't specify how the data should be secured. Proponents of the new standards say they would help ease the confusion that arises when organizations all do things differently.
Hospitals are increasingly relying on electronic tracking systems to keep tabs on equipment and lab specimens, and even to monitor the location of patients and staff. But the heightened surveillance is raising some safety and privacy concerns. The growing use of tracking technology has privacy experts warning that hospitals must take steps to protect any personal data from being inadvertently released, and requiring healthcare workers to wear tags raises questions about putting staffers under undue surveillance.
Express Scripts Inc. said a small number of its clients have received written threats to expose their personal information. The pharmacy-benefits management company said the threats are believed to be connected to a written extortion threat the company made public last week, which is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The letter included personal information of 75 members. Earlier this year, there was a spate of security lapses at hospitals, health insurers and the federal government, in which private information on hundreds of thousands of patients. The steady stream of privacy breaches threatens to undermine the healthcare industry's effort to adopt electronic medical records. A major barrier to healthcare digitization has been anxiety about preserving the security of such sensitive data.