Adventist Health is selling its South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach, CA, citing poor financial performance. The 18-hospital system has owned the facility for 10 years, but officials say it can no longer afford to fund its operation.
A Pennyslvania plan that would reward hospitals that reduce deadly infections could be delayed because criteria is still being developed. As a result, the state Legislature has not set aside payment money. The program is designed to reduce the more than 2,500 deaths annually attributed hospital germs, and a payment plan intended to take effect Jan. 1 would pay hospitals that cut infections by at least 10%.
Nashville-based Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt will nearly double bed space at the hospital. About 200 new beds will be added to the current 205-bed, 616,785-square-foot facility. These include about 90 new pediatric beds, 65 obstetrical beds, and 40 neonatal intensive care beds.
An Illinois law designed to regulate hospital building and other health facility expansions undercuts consumer choice and weakens "markets' ability to contain healthcare costs," the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission said in a statement. In the joint statement to an Illinois task force evaluating the merits of the state's so-called certificate-of-need law, the federal antitrust agencies weighed in with their opinions in advance of a hearing. In Illinois, the regulations are carried out by the Health Facilities Planning Board, but state lawmakers are evaluating whether the board and its rules are necessary.
Every legislative session in New York state, hospital executives trek to Albany and corral their legislators in an effort to get more money and better terms for their struggling facilities in New York City. Last March, one such hospital's executives were on the case, lobbying Assemblyman Anthony S. Seminerio. According to a federal criminal complaint, the hospital and an affiliated health care plan were paying Seminerio for his help: about $390,000 since 2000. Although the complaint against Seminerio does not reveal the name of the hospital or the two executives recorded talking to him, several hospital industry officials said that the hospital described in the complaint fit the profile of Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens.
An Institute of Medicine report nearly a decade ago highlighted the prevalence of medical errors, and they remain a major problem. Because they are physically small, and their kidneys, liver and immune system are still developing, Medical errors pose a greater threat to children than to adults. Even a tiny increase in the dose of medication can have serious effects, and if children take a turn for the worse, they can deteriorate more rapidly than adults. Children also are less able to communicate what they are feeling, making it difficult to diagnose their problem or know when a symptom or complication develops.