Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh is now UPMC Mercy after the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center took over the city's oldest hospital in a $120 million deal.
Access to the prescription writing habits of physicians is becoming a new battleground. For example, every state in New England has a prescription transparency issue in dispute. A new law was to take effect in Maine on Jan. 1 making the prescription writing habits of physicians confidential under state law.
Sponges are the most common foreign objects left behind in surgeries, according to several medical-device companies. Now, spiking costs are forcing providers to tighten surgical procedures aimed at making sure sponges are not left inside patients because retrieving a sponge in a redo surgery can cost $50,000 or more.
Penalties for Massachusetts residents who can afford health insurance but do not purchase it in 2008 could quadruple compared with the maximum penalty in 2007, according to draft regulations released by the Department of Revenue.
When Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston opens its new cardiovascular wing in May, all 136 rooms will include a family sleeping area. Brigham is one of a growing number of U.S. hospitals experimenting with open access or nearly open access for families of adult ICU patients.
Emergency room doctors are prescribing strong narcotics more often to patients who complain of pain, but minorities are less likely to get them than whites, according to a study. The analysis of more than 150,000 emergency room visits over 13 years found differences in prescribing by race and ethnicity in both urban and rural hospitals.