The Nevada-based Dayton and Fernley Rural Mental Health offices are both scheduled for permanent closure by September. Both mental health offices have provided healthcare services for mental health treatment in the Dayton and Fernley areas, and their closure will leave a substantial void in the healthcare net of Lyon County. With rising gasoline costs and no available public transportation system, the closures will be even more difficult for clients, experts say.
One July weekend in Wise, VA, a huge annual medical and dental expedition was set up by Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit organization that provides basic medical and dental care to people in the world’s most inaccessible regions. This year, more than 1,800 volunteer doctors, dentists, nurses, and assistants descended on Wise, setting up enormous field-hospital-style tents in which they saw roughly 2,500 patients over the course of two and a half days. The Knoxville, TN-based Remote Area Medical runs about 15 similar clinics around the world every year, from Guyana to East Africa and rural parts of Appalachia, and the clinics underscore the healthcare dilemmas of the poorest Americans.
'Critical Access' Hospitals are given a federal designation that allows it to bill Medicare for 101% of its outpatient, inpatient, laboratory, physical therapy, and post-acute care costs. The critical access hospital program was designed to ensure access to emergency, primary, and acute care in rural areas across the country. In Kansas alone, almost all of the state's rural hospitals are now critical access hospitals, and many are prospering.
Although the hospital needs to establish itself as a center of excellence, the individual doctors are the most important element in hospital marketing, according to this posting from Anas' Weblog. When a doctor first starts working for a hospital, they will draw new patients largely from the pool of patients they have previously treated. But doctors need to work with hospital marketers to increase the size of that patient pool from the beginning, the author says.
Should Highmark, Inc. and Independence Blue Cross merge, officials say the deal could create a $22.5 billion insurance giant. And top executives with each company could see salary increases of as much as $4.2 million.
A mental patient died after workers at a North Carolina hospital left him in a chair for 22 hours without feeding him or helping him use the bathroom, said federal officials. The officials have threatened to cut off Goldsboro-based Cherry Hospital funding. A state team has been sent to the facility to help draft new procedures to ensure patients receive proper care.