Kevin Brown, who has been CEO of Swedish Medical Center for just over a year, is leaving to lead Piedmont Healthcare, a five-hospital, not-for-profit system based in Atlanta. Swedish has named Marcel Loh, who currently oversees Swedish's suburban hospitals and community hospital affiliations, as interim chief executive. His new position took effect Monday. Brown, 46, has been with Swedish since 2000. He took over as CEO when Dr. Rod Hochman moved over to the larger Providence Health & Services system, which affiliated with Swedish in early 2012. Hochman took over as the Providence CEO on Monday.
SMITHFIELD — The Johnston County hospital system has become the latest community care provider to align itself with a much larger partner, selecting UNC Health Care to help it expand services and lower operating costs. The decision by Johnston Health, which operates a hospital in Smithfield and an outpatient clinic in Clayton, represents a victory for UNC over its rival WakeMed, which was one of two other possible partners that Johnston had been considering. It is also another example of the type of hospital consolidation that some believe is driving up the cost of health care for patients and employers.
Michael Ellison has a tough assignment. He's the associate dean of admissions choosing the first class of a brand new medical school, the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. It's a school with a very specific mission: minting new doctors who want to go into primary care practice. "We have over 1,600 applicants, and we will interview 400 applicants for 60 spots," Ellison says. Under the Affordable Care Act, millions more people with insurance may be headed to the doctor's office. That means the medical system will need more doctors, nurses, physician assistants and other healthcare workers to meet the demand.
Provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) are expected to reduce the number of adults who delay seeking needed medical care because of cost. Reforms are expected to improve the ability to obtain care, in part, by extending Medicaid access to adults with incomes at or below 133% of the federal poverty line. A recent Supreme Court ruling gave greater latitude to state approaches to Medicaid expansion. Various state strategies for implementing reforms may amplify geographic variation in the prevalence of delayed care. Estimating the existing variation in and correlates of delayed care may assist states that are planning to improve access within and beyond the framework provided by the ACA.
(Reuters) - A coalition of hospitals has sued the U.S. government, claiming that the healthcare program for military personnel systematically underpaid the hospitals for outpatient services over a period of six years. Michigan-based Ingham Regional Medical Center and four other community hospitals filed the proposed class action on Monday on behalf of 1,700 hospitals around the country that provided medical care to military personnel and their dependents between 2003 and 2009. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, names newly appointed Secretary of Defense Charles Hagel, the official operator of the TRICARE program, as the sole defendant.
Staph infections remain a significant problem for hospital patients, and scientists are trying to develop vaccines to prevent Staphylococcus aureus bacteria from establishing itself in vital areas like the heart, lungs or blood. But it's turning out to be a difficult task: A promising vaccine intended to protect heart-surgery patients from staph infections worked no better than a placebo, a new study reported. Making matters worse, patients who developed staph infections despite getting the vaccine were more likely to die than infected patients who got the placebo, the study found.