In a $40 million deal, Deerfield, Illinois-based Surgical Care Affiliates Inc. has purchased Surgical Hospital of Phoenix out of bankruptcy. Of the 15 physician owners of the surgical hospital, five are staying on board, said Dave Gonzales, who served as the chief restructuring officer and whose Scottsdale-based firm CSK Securities LLC negotiated the sale of the assets.
Hospitals across the country failed to reach a central government safety goal, according to a report released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While the CDC reported that most hospitals have reported fewer infections across the country, officials warned, "there is much more work to be done" to keep patients safe during their hospital stays. "More action is needed at every level of public health and health care to improve patient safety and eliminate infections that commonly threaten hospital patients," according to the report. Every day, 1 in 25 hospital patients contracts an infection — an alarming new statistic that the CDC said demands a stronger focus on patient safety nationwide.
Obama administration officials have warned that ambitious experiments run by the health law's $10 billion innovation lab wouldn't always be successful. Now there is evidence their caution was well placed. Only a small minority of community groups getting federal reimbursement to reduce expensive hospital readmissions produced significant results compared with those from sites that weren't part of the $300 million program, according to partial, early results. The closely watched program is one of many tests to control costs and improve care being run by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, which was created by the Affordable Care Act.
It was a heck of a Christmas for David Fairchild and his wife, Clara Peterson. They found out they were about to lose their new health insurance. "Clara was listening to the news on Iowa Public Radio and that's how we found out," Fairchild says. They went to their health plan's website that night. "No information. We still haven't gotten a letter about it from them." The two are the sole employees of a cleaning service and work nights. Fairchild has chronic leukemia but treats it with expensive medicine. Last year they saved hundreds of dollars switching from the insurer Wellmark to a plan run by CoOportunity Health.
Health care reform's emphasis on population health management is moving providers toward electronic health records systems that can document care in both inpatient and outpatient settings. That may be a key reason why the (formerly) outpatient EHR provider Athenahealth announced today at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference that it has agreed to buy RazorInsights, an electronic health record and financial platform for rural, critical access, and community hospitals. Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush said his company plans to leverage RazorInsights' inpatient expertise and technology to extend its presence into the 50-bed-and-under hospitals, which accounts for about one-third of the total U.S. hospital market.
Attorney General Martha Coakley has reached a deal with Steward Health Care System that requires the for-profit hospital operator to keep a temporary emergency room at Quincy Medical Center and other services in Quincy. The settlement does not penalize Steward for shuttering its Quincy hospital last month, even though that closure was in violation of a 2011 contract with Coakley's office. Steward kept the emergency room at Quincy Medical Center open even after ending other hospital services the day after Christmas. Coakley said Wednesday that Steward must maintain the emergency room until the end of 2015, or face up to $30,000 a month in fines.