Frustrated by rising benefit costs, executives at an Indianapolis healthcare system proposed a new program to get employees fired up about staying healthy. The proposal, however, generated so much resentment that the system never rolled out the program. The clash between Clarian Health Partners and its 13,000 employees is an example of the skirmishes that loom as employers experiment with tough get-healthy regimes.
Every year hundreds of terminally ill poor people on Medicaid die in sterile hospital rooms because Connecticut won't pay for their hospice care. But Gov. M. Jodi Rell's proposed state budget is calling for amending Connecticut's Medicaid plan to include hospice services for the terminally ill. Connecticut is one of three states without a hospice benefit in its Medicaid program, even though hospice care is more cost-effective than dying in a hospital.
Citing multiple lapses in patient care, the Connecticut health department has placed Hartford Hospital on probation. The department is demanding sweeping changes in the way the 800-bed teaching hospital delivers care. The hospital was cited for inadequate measures to prevent bedsores and infections; poor documentation of drug orders; and one case in which a sponge was left inside a kidney transplant patient.
Along with rising healthcare costs, workers need to plan for higher risks associated with financing their care in retirement, experts say. U.S. automakers have already offloaded their retiree healthcare liability by funding special trusts managed by the United Auto Workers union. Investment gains and workers' own cost containment will determine whether money will be there to meet retirees' needs. elephone and utility workers could be the next wave of these arrangements.
After the lab at Rockville Centre, NY-based Mercy Medical mixed up one patient's test with another woman's, the women had a double mastectomy and died due to complications from the surgery. In October 2007, the state Health Department concluded that the hospital had taken proper "corrective action" after the mix-up in the mastectomy case. But it is now investigating the hospital over the deaths of three other patients.
Until Peter Betts came to Barnert Hospital in Paterson, NJ, in July 2007, he did not realize just how dire the financial straits were at his hospital, one of the two main medical centers in this struggling city. On the same day, the Bayonne Medical Center completed an agreement for its sale to a limited liability corporation that would assume the bulk of its debt. What has happened in Paterson and Bayonne paints a vivid picture of the distressed situation of New Jersey's hospital industry.