Layoffs at University Medical Center are expected to save $21 million in the next nine months and help make the public hospital more sustainable, officials said today. "This isn't something we want to do, but there's an understanding of why we're doing it," CEO Lawrence Barnard said, reflecting on some of the reactions he's gotten from hospital staff. "We need to structure ourselves in a way that's sustainable." The layoffs, announced on Wednesday, eliminated 285 positions for nurses, office assistants and other support staff. As a result, UMC is ending its outpatient oncology, outpatient pharmacy and Lied clinic services, impacting about 1,000 outpatients, officials said.
St. Luke's Health System may expand further west next year, based on an early agreement that would lead to its acquisition of Weiser Memorial Hospital, a small 25-bed public hospital that St. Luke's already manages. If the two organizations decide over the next six months to move forward to an acquisition, they will seek a public vote in Washington County, whose taxpayers support the hospital. If that passes, the Weiser hospital — including its Family Medical Center and Surgical Specialty Clinic — will join St. Luke's on April 1. The process started eight months ago, in December, when Weiser hospital leaders approached St. Luke's. Both organizations formed an integration committee and signed a confidentiality statement.
A decade ago almost all doctors kept paper charts on every patient. That is changing quickly as laptops become as common as stethoscopes in exam rooms. Recent hacking attacks have raised questions about how safe that data may be. Here are some frequently asked questions about this evolution underway in American medicine and the government programs sparking the change. Are my medical records stored electronically? At least some of the information you share with your doctor or any hospital or clinic where you've been treated is probably stored on a computer. It's pretty common for most hospitals, clinics and doctors' offices to digitally store your basic information including your name, address and insurance company, the same way many retailers do.
As trite as it sounds, I went into medicine because I like science, and I like helping people. Twenty years after starting this adventure, I still come away at the end of most days satisfied and fulfilled about the things I do. Most humans feel good when they lift, help, or encourage others. I get opportunities to do this everyday. I find a lot of pleasure in helping to relieve suffering, getting to know people, and helping them find solutions to enjoy their lives. Over the years much has changed in medicine. New technology, medications, and evidence have improved some of the things we do. We can treat things we once could not.
In 2001, rumors were circulating in Greek hospitals that surgery residents, eager to rack up scalpel time, were falsely diagnosing hapless Albanian immigrants with appendicitis. At the University of Ioannina medical school's teaching hospital, a newly minted doctor named Athina Tatsioni was discussing the rumors with colleagues when a professor who had overheard asked her if she'd like to try to prove whether they were true?he seemed to be almost daring her. She accepted the challenge and, with the professor's and other colleagues' help, eventually produced a formal study showing that, for whatever reason, the appendices removed from patients with Albanian names in six Greek hospitals were more than three times as likely to be perfectly healthy as those removed from patients with Greek names.
In 2012, national health care spending in the United States reached $2.8 trillion, or more than 17 percent of the country's gross domestic product — more than any other industrialized country. And yet overall our citizens aren't healthier than those in other industrialized countries. Of course, there are a million complicated reasons for this: Generally speaking, prices in the United States are just higher than those in other countries. In addition, the payment system is fragmented and includes a mix of government funding and private third-party payers, which leads to huge variation in cost for the same medical procedures.