A decade ago, largely in response to widespread concerns that tired residents were making too many errors, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education enacted nationwide rules that limited the number of consecutive hours residents can work. Five years later, a review of the data suggested that, on average, the rules had failed to make our nation's teaching hospitals any safer. Proponents of the reforms argued that the rules had neither gone far enough nor been properly enforced. Accordingly, in 2011, first-year residents were limited even more—to sixteen-hour shifts, rather than the thirty hours previously allowed. Training programs scrambled to comply.
HOUSTON — If Texas wants to tailor its own expansion of health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act, then it's now up to state leaders to reach out to the federal government to have a dialogue, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Monday. During a visit to Houston promoting the implementation of the health care law with local leaders and community groups, Sebelius said the Obama Administration remains eager to have conversations with Texas about expanding health care coverage in the state. But, she said, key discussions about expanding Medicaid to provide health insurance to those who cannot afford it must first occur at the state level, not between Washington, D.C., and Texas.
Mountain States Health Alliance has tapped a veteran health care executive to serve as president and CEO of the Johnson City-based hospital system. Alan Levine will succeed longtime CEO Dennis Vonderfecht effective Jan. 6, 2014. Vonderfecht announced in February his plans to retire at the end of 2013. Levine, 46, will head to upper East Tennessee from Florida, where he is a Health Management Associates senior vice president and the president of the Florida Group, responsible for operations of 23 hospitals, several surgery centers, physician practices and other support functions across the state, according to Health Management's website.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released final guidelines on the design, testing and use of radio-frequency (RF) wireless medical devices. Although it doesn't promulgate legally enforceable responsibilities, the document is intended to guide both device manufacturers and healthcare providers toward the safe and secure use of wireless medical devices. Covered are devices "that are implanted, worn on the body or other external wireless medical devices intended for use in hospitals, homes, clinics, clinical laboratories, and blood establishments." The FDA document has no relation to the impending guidance from the agency about how it will regulate apps that turn smartphones and tablets into medical devices.
When staffers at the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del., want to simplify appointment scheduling, make surgery smoother for kids or even work on doctors' bedside manner, they turn to a special group of experts, a "virtual advisory council" made up of parents on a private social network. Hospitals are turning to Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media to recruit patients and their families as advisers. They are asking parents for input, via questionnaires and surveys, on improvements in care, new services and even new facility names. At the University of Michigan Health System, these "e-advisors" answer about 35 online surveys a year, and a teen council responds to questions via its own Facebook page. [Registration required]
As California prepares to roll out its effort to market the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, criminals have increasingly been working schemes to take advantage of consumers who may not be fully informed about the complex health reform law commonly known as Obamacare that will require them to buy insurance if they don't have it. The scams include high-pressure e-mails, phone calls from people masquerading as representatives of the federal government, and visits from seemingly official enrollers trying to persuade people to buy a policy, sign up for a bogus medical card or give out their personal information.