Gov. Martin O'Malley's intervention in the wage fight between Johns Hopkins Hospital and its service workers reflects the lingering dispute's significance but also signals that it may be resolved soon. The hospital and members of the 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East labor union, which represents 2,000 Hopkins workers, went back to the bargaining table Tuesday after the governor asked them to take a cooling-off period. Union leaders also called off a four-day strike that was to have begun Friday. It would have been the second strike in the dispute. Workers walked off the job for three days in late April after negotiations for a new contract broke down. Talks began in March and have continued intermittently.
Ever since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) decided to penalize hospitals financially for avoidable readmission of patients within 30 days of their discharge, health systems have been coming up with inventive ways to keep patients out of the hospital while also trying to bring in more revenue. Most of these approaches make sense. They've created population health management programs that analyze patient data to spot those at high risk for readmission, for instance, and then offer preventive measures to those patients. They've created care-coordination systems to make sure discharged patients arrive safely at their next destination, whether it be their home, a rehabilitation unit, or a nursing facility.
Massachusetts courts routinely fail to report doctors facing criminal charges to the board that oversees physician discipline, sometimes leaving regulators and the public in the dark, a state audit released Tuesday found. State courts reported just two doctors to the Board of Registration in Medicine between 2002 and 2012, the audit found. But when state Auditor Suzanne Bump's staff searched criminal records, it found 84 active physicians during the same period with felony or serious misdemeanor convictions, or "continuations without a finding.'' The law requires the courts to report all such cases to the medical board, which considers whether they warrant board action and, in certain instances, posts the information on its website.
A Lehigh County jury today found that St. Luke's University Hospital should not have sued the families of two patients who died at the facility when serial killer Charles Cullen worked there. Cullen is serving consecutive life sentences in New Jersey after admitting he killed at least 29 people in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In 2004, family members of two former patients who died at the hospital in Fountain Hill filed malpractice suits against St. Luke's. Harry Miller sued on behalf of Regina Miller, and Robert and Leslie Hall sued on behalf of Marilyn Hall. The suits claimed Cullen murdered those clients during his tenure at St. Luke's, between 2000 and 2002.
As a young man, Robert McDonald studied war and trained as a paratrooper to help wage it. Now, as the White House prepares to nominate him for secretary of Veterans Affairs, he'll turn his mind to the aftermath of conflict and the 9 million former American service people enrolled for care. If confirmed by the Senate, he'll succeed Eric Shinseki, a retired general who resigned last monthamid explosive charges of mismanagement, falsification of records and a toxic culture that left patients waiting indefinitely for treatment. Earlier this month, the acting head of the agency confirmed that 35 veterans left off a list died before seeing a doctor, perhaps as result of the delay.
Washington State's health insurance exchange is looking to be an attractive marketplace for new health insurance carriers, according to an early analysis of insurer premium rate filings by McKinsey & Company. Four new insurers have applied to sell individual policies in the state's exchange next year, making Washington among the states with the highest number of new exchange entrants of the 12 states where preliminary 2015 rates have been filed, according to McKinsey. If insurance regulators approve the new carriers, Washington will have 12 insurers on the exchange in 2015, up from eight participating this year.