Private health consultants are trying to fill a gap in healthcare created by overworked primary care doctors who have less time to coordinate patient care. Consultants, many of whom are registered nurses, social workers, or physicians, help clients find specialists and also will make calls to ensure that a patient's various doctors are communicating with each other. The trend also caters to the desire of a growing number of patients to take charge of their healthcare.
It was a day of prognostications as America's Health Insurance Plans turned the stage over to former lawmakers and presidential advisers to discuss the future of U.S. healthcare during the group's annual meeting in San Francisco, writes Wall Street Journal blogger Kristen Gerencher. Among the speakers were three people hands-on experience in healthcare policy, including former Sen. John Breaux, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson. Gerencher also notes that protesters surrounded the conference building behind police barricades erected to allow attendees a space to come and go.
"Hopkins," a follow-up to the acclaimed "Hopkins 24/7" from 2000, takes television viewers inside the Baltimore hospital. Johns Hopkins Hospital officials said after the mostly positive feedback they received following the first documentary they had few reservations about opening their corridors for a second time. Executive producer Terence Wrong, who also produced the first documentary, said he wanted to revisit Hopkins because of changes that had taken place since the first series. More women and international staff members and improved technology were some of the changes that Wrong wanted to explore in the new series.
A foreign company is breaking into the heavily regulated Chinese healthcare system by targeting the elite who are willing to pay premium prices for premium care. Chindex has opened Western-style hospitals and clinics in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to cater to affluent expatriates and wealthy Chinese. Staffed by foreign doctors and some of China's top physicians, its fees are too high for most Chinese.
More than 100 complaints were made the Maryland Board of Pharmacy last year about patients who received either the wrong medication from a pharmacy or the wrong dosage. Officials say more such cases occur statewide, but just how many is unclear as pharmacies are not required to report them.
Saint Agnes Medical Center in Fresno, CA, has suspended open-heart surgeries after a state report found that the facility was not protecting patients "amid an outbreak of infections" that began last year and continued through May. The hospital now plans to bring in auditors from Michigan-based Trinity Health, its corporate parent; an outside agency will also review Saint Agnes' cardiac-surgery program.