Heart patient Arnaldo Navarro Delgado is flanked by a community health worker and a medical social worker as he sits in his apartment off Taylor Boulevard in south Louisville. Using a Spanish translator, who joins the group by speaker phone, the workers chat with Delgado, 64, about his life and his health status since he underwent open heart surgery a few weeks before at Jewish Hospital. Along with asking about his level of pain, his weight and his blood pressure, workers Samantha Roberts and Shalonda Jones ask Delgado, who is unemployed, whether he's been able to find a way to pay his rent and whether he and his wife have enough food to make it through the weekend.
Truman Medical Center in Kansas City has agreed to stop rejecting health insurance for some patients injured in auto accidents in order to collect more money from other sources, according to court records. The agreement, which still must be approved by a Jackson County judge, is in response to a lawsuit filed over a billing practice that affected more than 180 patients. Patients will either be partially reimbursed or will no longer have to make payments on their bills, the Kansas City Star reported. Truman Medical Center was accused in the lawsuit of avoiding deep discounts required by health insurers by rejecting patients' health insurance and seeking reimbursement from other sources, often by putting a lien on settlements patients receive from auto insurance and occasionally directly billing the patients.
Over the past decade, healthcare information technology has transformed. Health systems small and large are increasingly automated and dependent on information systems. But even as they have embraced IT, a divide has emerged within organizations. Advanced governance allows some front-running organizations to rationalize IT spending, achieve unprecedented automation, and use critical data to drive the organization. But others -- perhaps yours -- struggle with ineffective steering committees, budgets that slash critical IT support, and disengaged and oppositional users. Which side of this sounds like your organization? Here are some ways to tell.
Do you only speak Tzotzil? Or maybe you can only properly describe your symptoms in your native Chaldean. Don't worry, St. Luke's Magic Valley Medical Center has got you covered. The hospital already had a contract to provide translators and a few Spanish-speaking employees. But someone wasn't always around to translate if a non-English speaking or deaf patient came into the emergency room or for Quick Care i.e., walk-ins with colds, injuries or infections that are urgent but not serious enough for the ER. So the hospital started a pilot program in the emergency rooms in Twin Falls and at St. Luke's Jerome two years ago, using a remote translation service, said Malena Rodriguez, a nurse and the hospital's coordinator for language services.
It's common for patients to come into a hospital with injuries, but too often they're the ones inflicting injury on nurses, technicians and security guards, according to a new study. Researchers analyzed incident reports of patient violence to identify the situations most likely to lead to a physical conflict, in the hope of training hospital staff to avert the attacks. "This study is contributing to knowledge about how we can develop (patient violence) prevention," Judith Arnetz told Reuters Health. "This is a project that is very much in collaboration with hospital stakeholders and that means both labor and management," said Arnetz, a researcher with the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit who led the new study
Workers from Montana's Rib & Chop House restaurants in Hermitage and Meadville will go to a website to shop for health insurance plans next month, but they won't be using online exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act. They'll be on a private exchange run by Pittsburgh health insurer Highmark Inc., where they'll have a fixed amount of money contributed by Montana's that they can choose how to spend, said Megan Pratt, who manages human resources for the restaurant company. "Our broker thought it would work well for us," Pratt said. "We have line staff who make minimum wage to salaried managers that make more than that