Tufts Health Plan chief executive James Roosevelt Jr. is a candidate to run the Social Security Administration, the program his grandfather signed into law in 1935, according to people briefed on the matter. Roosevelt, 67, is the grandson of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and would come to the post at a time when the agency is facing intense financial and political pressures.
The Illinois government agency that looks into complaints against doctors announced it will lay off investigators starting Tuesday and warned of yearlong delays in physician licensing because the Legislature didn't act to bail out the medical watchdog unit. In a letter being sent to doctors Thursday, officials from Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation pin the blame on the Illinois State Medical Society for lobbying against legislation to transfer $9.6 million to keep the program going. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter on Wednesday.
Those in charge want to take "Durham" out of Durham Regional Hospital's name and put "Duke" in its place. "They felt like taking advantage of the Duke brand would bring more business," said Durham County Commissioners Chairman Fred Foster. "To get the recognition of Durham Regional being part of the Duke system." Durham Regional Hospital administrators and trustees made their case for a name change in one-on-one meetings with all five county commissioners and at a commissioners work session this week. A decision is due at Monday's regular commissioners' meeting.
Several years ago, a highly respected medical expert I had just met shared a little-known detail of his illustrious career: as a young doctor, he had stopped practicing medicine for a few years to homeschool his son. His revelation took me completely by surprise. Doctors rarely talked about taking time off for fear that colleagues would assume them incompetent or in possession of some serious personal flaw.
New York City is seeking to curb abuse of potentially addictive and deadly painkillers such as Oxycontin and Vicodin with new limits on how widely the drugs should be prescribed. Emergency departments at New York's public hospitals will only prescribe a three-day supply of opioid painkillers, won't refill lost or stolen prescriptions and shouldn't prescribe long-acting versions of the drugs, according to voluntary guidelines the city issued today.
Virginia hospital visitors were urged by health care advocates Wednesday to wear masks in an effort to protect against a widespread and severe outbreak of flu rapidly spreading across the country. More than two dozen hospitals, medical facilities and urgent-care centers in the Hampton Roads area announced changes to their visitation policies that also include restrictions on visitors younger than 18 years old, since youth are more susceptible to the severe H1N1 flu strain. "Our goal as health care providers is to use every available means to protect our patients from exposure to outside infections," officials said.