A central Maine hospital is closing its clinic for good. Tuesday will be Northern Light Inland Hospital's last day of service in Waterville. Northern Light Regional President Marie Vinneau says the hospital will no longer accept new emergency patients at noon, and their clinical operations will end at 5 p.m. Vinneau says the decision to shut down was not easy, but their only choice. The hospital was losing more than $1 million per month from higher operating costs, low reimbursement rates, and a labor shortage.
The bill contains measures directly responding to high-profile public scrutiny of the insurance industry over the past year on issues including prior authorization and proposed time limits on the use of anesthesia.
The CDC's airport screening program has detected multiple cases of the new COVID-19 variant NB.1.8.1, which has been linked to a large surge of the virus in China. Cases linked to the NB.1.8.1 variant have been reported in arriving international travelers at airports in California, Washington state, Virginia and the New York City area, according to records uploaded by the CDC's airport testing partner Ginkgo Bioworks.
There is rising public furor toward insurers and in particular UnitedHealthcare, the largest private health insurer in the U.S., which has become the poster child for problems with the U.S. insurance industry and the nation’s sprawling health-care system. The company and other insurers have faced backlash from patients who say they were denied necessary care, providers who say they are buried in red tape and lawmakers who say they are alarmed by its vast influence.
The Departments of Labor, HHS, and the Treasury on Thursday released several new guidance documents and requests for information on price transparency, following the February executive order on the same subject. As part of this package, CMS released new guidance on calculating the estimated allowed amount values in the hospital machine-readable files.
Five OB nurses at Mount Desert Island Hospital have received formal written warnings following a protest against the hospital's decision to close its labor and delivery unit this summer. The hospital says the demonstration escalated beyond peaceful picketing, while the nurses' union calls the response retaliation. The warnings, delivered by the hospital's attorney, are reportedly the first step in a disciplinary process that could lead to termination.