Albany Medical Center has four biomedical startup companies in the queue to join the center's incubator when it opens this spring. The 8,000 square-foot biomedical acceleration and commercialization center will open in May or June, says Kevin Leyden, senior vice president of business development and strategic partnerships. The center, at the second-largest hospital system in the Albany area, has space in the incubator for between eight and 10 companies. The incubator at Albany Med is among several accelerators in the region that are aiming to tie research to commercialization and create a regional support system for entrepreneurs.
Mississippi has a sickly reputation. The Magnolia State ranks at or near the bottom in most health rankings: worst infant mortality and most kids born with low birth weight; second-to-highest rate of obesity and cancer deaths; second from the last in diabetes outcomes. But the state is a leader in one aspect of health care: telemedicine. The state's only academic hospital has remote connections with 165 sites, providing specialized services to some of the state's most far-flung, medically deprived cities and towns. Mississippi's telemedicine program, ranked among the seven best in the country, has inspired neighboring Arkansas to take bigger steps in some areas of the field, and the impact of its success is making waves in Washington as well.
Owners of six nonprofit hospitals, nervously awaiting a buyer's final approval of sale terms that would keep the hospitals from closing, have filed suit accusing a labor union of trying to sabotage the deal in order to extract concessions from the buyer at its other hospitals. Daughters of Charity Health System claimed that the Service Employees International Union and its United Healthcare Workers West affiliate have cost their hospitals tens of millions of dollars by delaying the sale and by pressuring potential bidders to drop out, thus driving the price down. The hospital chain filed the suit Monday in Santa Clara County Superior Court, seeking unspecified damages for its losses and punitive damages.
The number of hospitalists treating patients at PeaceHealth's Sacred Heart Medical Centers in Springfield and Eugene has fallen to dangerously low levels at a time of peak demand, local hospitalists say. There are far fewer hospitalists — doctors who care for patients in the hospital around the clock — at the Sacred Heart hospitals than there were last summer, Sacred Heart hospitalists say. The hospitalists' criticism comes on top of complaints from Sacred Heart nurses, who have said a shortage of nurses is putting patients at risk. "We're very concerned about patient safety. That's our No. 1 goal to ensure that," said Dr. Brittany Ellison, a hospitalist at Sacred Heart and communications director for the recently formed Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association — the first hospitalist union in the United States.
Mistakes at hospitals happen more often than the public knows, and health care systems pay millions of dollars to keep it that way. They're called "secret settlements" or "confidentiality agreements," and they prohibit patients from telling anyone about hospital wrongdoing. In a Channel 9 investigation, anchor Sarah Rosario learned what's being done to limit secret agreements and also spoke with an Allegany County woman who said hospital negligence ruined her life." There was so much anger. So much hurt from being deceived," Debbie Pennington said. Pennington is finally speaking out and calling for changes 20 years after a surgical sponge was left in her body during a partial hysterectomy at Hugh Chatham Hospital in Elkin, North Carolina.
The nurses at St. Vincent Hospital are celebrating a recently ratified three-year contract that provides better health benefits, a raise, and commitments to grow staffing levels in different departments. The 700 union nurses at the Worcester hospital, which is a part of the nationwide hospital system Tenet Healthcare, have been negotiating a new contract since November 2013. After more than 20 negotiating sessions, the hospital and the union reached an agreement on Feb. 3, which was ratified by the nurses on Feb. 18. Considering the economic climate many hospitals find themselves in, with dwindling reimbursements and mounting technology needs, the contract is a surprising win for nurses of the public, for-profit institution.