Bon Secours Hospital, which sits amid blocks of West Baltimore row houses, lacks the prestige of the giant Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland hospitals, with their renowned teaching staffs and research facilities. It lacks the sprawling glass pavilions of southwest Baltimore's St. Agnes Hospital, which looks like a suburban medical center. It's been a fixture in the neighborhood since 1919, when it was opened by an order of nuns who served middle-class patients from across the city. But today, few patients are affluent. The hospital, outpatient and wellness centers that comprise the system primarily serve neighborhoods including Sandtown-Winchester and Harlem Park, predominantly black communities made famous in pop culture by TV shows like HBO's "The Wire."
Community Health Systems Inc., the U.S.'s second-largest chain of for-profit hospitals, reported an unexpected fourth-quarter loss as admissions were hurt by falling numbers of patients during a slow flu season. Total hospital admissions fell 3.6 percent from a year earlier, and fell 3.4 percent on a same-facility basis, Franklin, Tennessee-based Community Health said in a statement on Monday. Excluding certain items, the loss was 28 cents a share in the quarter. On average, analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News had estimated earnings of 95 cents a share; the figures may not directly compare. Net operating revenues fell 2.4 percent to $4.8 billion.
For John Kuhn, a simple X-ray after a snowboarding accident turned into an accounting nightmare when the hospital billed him $20,000 for a surgery he never had. "So I had to go down in front of the billing department no less and pull up my shirt and show them that I did not have any major scarring on my stomach at all," Kuhn said. It turns out the hospital's hard drive had been stolen along with Kuhn's medical records. He's not alone, experts say health care-record hacking is skyrocketing — up 11,000 percent last year alone.
Cancer patients who miss two or more radiation treatment sessions are at increased risk for a return of their cancer, a new study finds. The study included more than 1,200 patients who had radiation therapy for head and neck, breast, lung, cervical, uterine or rectal cancer between 2007 and 2012. Of those patients, 22 percent missed two or more scheduled radiation treatment appointments. While all patients eventually completed their radiation therapy regimens, they were prolonged an average of one week for those who missed two or more treatment sessions. Rates of cancer recurrence were 16 percent for patients who missed two or more radiation sessions and 7 percent for those who did not, according to the study published online recently in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics.
When Sayre Memorial Hospital closed abruptly in western Oklahoma last week, it became the 67th rural hospital to shut its doors since 2010. Many more could follow. Another 673 hospitals nationally are teetering on the edge of closure due to a number of federal funding decisions, according to a report prepared in collaboration with an association representing rural hospitals. In Sayre, located in a county of fewer than 23,000 people, the 35-bed nonprofit hospital seems to have been hit by a "perfect storm" of factors, said Belinda Graham, executive director of the Sayre Chamber of Commerce.
When one of my best friends in medical school returned from an interview for a surgical residency program, he told me how some of the surgeons there bragged that they were worked so hard that the divorce rate among their trainees was greater than 100 percent — some of them burned through two marriages. They were proud of this. I was horrified. I doubt this statistic was true, even 20 years ago, and I'm even surer it's not true now. But it points to an important truth: Some physicians equate "suffering" with "commitment" and believe that a residency should be grueling and difficult.