A British couple whose unexpected premature delivery of their child in a New York hospital racked up a $200,000 bill has been assured by the hospital they won't be on the hook for payment. Katie Amos, 30, with her fiancé Lee Johnston, 29, were taking a short holiday trip to Manhattan when Amos suddenly went into labor 11 weeks before her due date. Rushed to Lenox Hill hospital on Dec. 28, Amos delivered a son, Dax, who weighed just 3 pounds and who has since been in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit.
New episodes in the nation's long-running political drama over health care are coming via your news feed in 2015. The fate of President Barack Obama's health care law again hangs in the balance as the Supreme Court weighs another legal challenge to the program, now covering millions of people. And a Republican-led Congress prepares for more votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, ignoring threatened vetoes by the president. Five things to know about health care in the year ahead: THE MAIN EVENT: The biggest health care news of 2015 probably won't come from Congress or the White House, but the Supreme Court.
Emergency room doctors across the country say they started seeing a steady number of flu patients back in November and it has only gotten much worse since then. And by definition, we are still more than two months away from the peak of the flu season. Dr. Manu Malhotra, the Henry Ford Hospital Emergency Room Director says, "there is a mortality associated with the flu that is under-reported. There are ten of thousands that die each year. People don't take it as seriously." In doctor Malhotra's opinion, this year is a bad one when it comes to the number of patients getting sick from the influenza virus. Even those that may have gotten the influenza vaccination.
A U.S. health-care worker exposed to the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone arrived at a Nebraska hospital on Sunday for observation and potential treatment. The patient, who has not been identified, arrived at the Nebraska Medical Center's Biocontainment Unit mid-afternoon. "Even though the patient hasn't had a positive test for Ebola, all of our team members are taking the same precautions that were taken with the first three patients who did have Ebola," spokesman Taylor Wilson said. "It's out of an abundance of caution that this approach is being used."
Financial penalties for hospitals under the Affordable Care Act are making themselves felt locally and nationwide. Hospitals whose rate is judged too high for hospital-acquired conditions or presumably preventable conditions — such as infections patients acquire in the hospital — get reduced Medicare payments this fiscal year, which started Oct. 1. Heart of Florida Regional Medical Center, Haines City, is the only one in Polk County this fiscal year to be penalized for having too high a rate of hospital-acquired conditions, according to data from the federal government. It's one of about 724 nationwide. Penalties will reach an estimated $373 million for those hospitals, whose Medicare payments will be lowered by 1 percent, according to Kaiser Health News.
A key measure of hospital emergency room use in Los Angeles County shows continued growth during the first six months of Obamacare, but also points to shifting patterns of where patients are choosing to receive urgent medical treatment. With the healthcare expansion last year, many are watching how the Affordable Care Act affects emergency room use. President Obama has promised his signature health law will gradually reduce expensive ER visits as access to other kinds of care is expanded. Critics contend newly insured patients — especially those enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state's low-income health program that picks up most patient costs — aren't likely to seek care elsewhere, and will overwhelm emergency rooms.