Healthcare providers are allowed to collect millions of dollars in federal Medicare payments each year despite owing the government more than $2 billion in back taxes, according to the Government Accountability Office. The office found that more than 27,000 providers flouted the tax system while collecting Medicare fees in 2006. That represented 6% of all providers in the Medicare program.
The patient experience is profiled in in a new book about deadly hospital errors, "Fatal Care: Survive in the U.S. Health System." The book's author says he wrote it to alert the public to the fact that 98,000 patient deaths occur as a result of medical errors in U.S. hospitals annually, and about half of them are preventable. There is little public information available to help patients research a hospital's safety records before seeking care there, he adds.
Although the Pennsylvania Legislature will be on a summer recess, Pittsburgh-area advocates who are pushing for a major healthcare expansion vow to continue their work. The Consumer Health Coalition, Health Care for Health Care Workers and other groups recently traveled to Harrisburg to lobby for Gov. Ed Rendell's Pennsylvania Access to Basic Care plan. The plan would subsidize health insurance for adults with incomes up to 200% of the federal poverty level.
The only hospital in Franklin County, NC, will face an investigation after a state senator complained that hospital nurses are overworked because of staff shortages, resulting in lapses in patient care. Sen. Doug Berger complaints included nurses working eight- and 16-hour shifts with no breaks, breaks not occurring because of inadequate staffing, and staff not receiving lunch breaks. The hospital is already under federal scrutiny after investigators found poor record-keeping by the medical staff as well as problems with how quickly the hospital's labs reported important test results.
Alabama healthcare regulators have decided not to reconsider a new Gulf Shores outpatient surgery facility. In April, the Certificate of Need Review Board rejected plans for the proposed $9.4 million Pleasure Island Ambulatory Surgery Center. The board has now unanimously rejected a request to reconsider its earlier decision, but supporters of the new center vowed to continue their fight in court. Representatives of Infirmary Health System and Foley's South Baldwin Regional Medical Center oppose the new facility, saying that their area surgery centers are operating at only about 50% of capacity.
North Carolina-based Duke University Health System has settled claims by patients who alleged they suffered health problems after being exposed to hydraulic fluid on surgical instruments at two Duke hospitals in 2004. The settlement remains confidential, but resolves claims against Duke by an unknown number of clients. Dozens of patients who were exposed to the hydraulic fluid at Durham Regional and Duke Raleigh hospitals have now sued the companies that contracted with Duke to sterilize the equipment.