Diana Matsushima cares for both her husband and sister-in-law full-time, giving them their medications and driving them to their doctor appointments. But when either ends up hospitalized, Matsushima said her role as their primary caregiver is often overlooked. She isn't always included in the discussions at the hospital, and she sometimes leaves confused about how to best care for them when she gets home. When they are discharged, she said the nurses hand her a stack of papers without much — if any — explanation. But beginning in January, family caregivers such as Matsushima could have a much different experience at the hospital.
The second half of 2015 held more medical drama than a season of "Grey's Anatomy" for Forest Park Medical Center, and next year promises much of the same. The man guiding the future of the financially flailing hospital system predicts that virtually all of the drama will be resolved by mid-2016, although it's too soon to say whether the system will survive mostly intact or go to multiple acquirers. The Affordable Care Act, which contains financial penalties against physician-owned hospitals like Forest Park's, deserves some of the blame for dismembering the once-proud, upscale for-profit hospital network.
Local hospitals and doctors would like to hawk their services to Canadians weary of waiting months in their country for knee replacement surgeries, colonoscopies, cancer treatment and other medical procedures. Canadians get most of their medical care for free through their government's health care system. But the waits are getting longer because of a doctor shortage and overcrowded clinics and emergency rooms. The median wait time to see a specialist in Canada is 18.3 weeks, up from 9.3 weeks in 1993, according to the Fraser Institute, a Canadian research group. The University Hill Corp., a Syracuse nonprofit planning and development organization that represents hospitals and academic institutions, hopes to exploit that difference.
The lowly plate and humble utensil are getting high-tech upgrades to become tools for people watching their weight or managing diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and cancer. There are dishes that could send you smartphone alerts reminding you to use them when you enter the kitchen. Utensils that stabilize your food even as your hand shakes. Cups and spoons that aim to zap your taste buds to intensify flavor. And plates that purport to turn eating healthy into a game. The idea that plating affects the way we experience food, long exploited by high-end restaurants, has recently made its way into hospitals and hospices.
Medicine arrived late to the information age. Years after banking, travel, retail, and most other industries went digital, hospitals and doctors' offices still featured endlessly ringing telephones, indecipherable handwritten documents, and busy mailrooms. But in the last five years, spurred in part by the Affordable Care Act's mandate for electronic health records, the medical world has embraced computers as a tool as vital as stethoscopes and X-rays. This past year, Partners Healthcare spent over a billion dollars adopting Epic, a system that allows a doctor to look up test results, answer a patient's questions, communicate with consultants, write prescriptions, and bill for his or her services, all with a few clicks.
New Jersey's nonprofit hospitals, which have long enjoyed a tax exemption, would have to make payments to their host communities to cover the cost of municipal services under a bipartisan measure making its way through the state legislature. Lawmakers are responding to a June court ruling which found that the 40-acre Morristown Medical Center owed local property taxes because of "blurred lines" between its nonprofit and for-profit businesses. The 687-bed hospital's owner agreed in November to pay the town $15.5 million over the next decade.