Mercy Medical officials have announced that the Alabama-based nonprofit Catholic healthcare company had laid off 18 employees due to a drop in the number of patients staying at their facilities over the past two years. Of those laid off, just one employee had provided direct medical care to patients, while the rest had held administrative positions, said Mercy Medical officials.
There is now more evidence that drugs should be tried first and often are just as effective in patients with chronic chest pain who are not in big danger of a heart attack. The slim early advantage for angioplasty at relieving pain in these nonemergency cases starts to fade within six months and vanishes after three years, according to a report from a landmark heart study. That is sooner than the five years doctors estimated in 2007 after their first analysis of the study.
Texas Health Resources Inc. is renaming its 12 hospitals to make their link more clear. A new green-and-blue logo with the name "Texas Health" will precede the current name of each hospital. Texas Health spent $1.3 million to prepare for the change, which included updating its Web site, paying legal fees, and changing graphic designs on business materials. Over the next three years, THR plans to spend an additional $22 million to complete the change.
Gov. Sonny Perdue is helping promote a free card for Georgians who have no drug coverage. The Together Rx Access program, created by major drug companies, offers savings on more than 300 brand-name pharmaceuticals and some generics. Pharmacists and consumer advocates say, however, that the discounts from such cards can vary widely depending on the drug and pharmacy used.
Virginia Beach-based Amerigroup Corp. has finalized an agreement under which the company will pay $225 million to settle claims that it avoided enrolling pregnant women and sick people in Medicaid programs. The company allegedly left those groups out of Medicaid health plans it was running in Illinois, which were designed for low-income patients. The U.S. Justice Department and the Illinois government charged that Amerigroup excluded those patients because they were more expensive to treat and would hurt its profit margins.
A federal judge has ruled against Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital in Manistique, MI, which sued the state due to a disagreement involving how long some patients are allowed to stay in swing beds—beds used for patients requiring short-term treatment of an illness or injury or recovering from surgery, and for those getting long-term care. Michigan officials said if a bed is open at a nearby nursing home, such patients must be transferred after five days, while Schoolcraft officials argued federal law lets the patients stay up to 100 days. The judge sided with the state, and fined the hospital $500,000.