The operating room, once an exclusive club for male surgeons, is becoming more welcoming to female surgeons. But the experiences of local doctors suggest that full gender equality has not yet arrived. The explicit gender discrimination alleged in a high-profile lawsuit settled for $7 million this month against Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and its former chief of surgery is rare in Boston hospitals, according to 10 female surgeons interviewed by the Globe. Still, female surgeons can experience subtler obstacles, including pressure to behave a certain way and conflicting family responsibilities.
Neither the Federal Trade Commission nor Phoebe Putney Health System is stating yet what its next move might be following a ruling last week from the U.S. Supreme Court, but indications are that the matter is not over yet. In a slip opinion released Feb. 19, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Georgia had not clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed a policy to allow hospital authorities to make acquisitions that substantially lessen competition. With the ruling, the high court reversed a lower court ruling and effectively sided with the FTC in its ongoing challenge of the acquisition of Palmyra Medical Center.
Health insurer Aetna, which has acquired and created a portfolio of health IT companies in recent years, has rolled its IT, population health management, and business incubation assets into a new business unit called Healthagen. The goal, according to the Hartford, Conn.-based company, is to have a common brand for addressing provider and consumer needs in the areas of care coordination, value and greater transparency in healthcare.
When a physician or hospital screws up, sometimes all a patient wants is an apology. But they often don't get one, because the apology could be construed as an admission of negligence—and could become fodder for a future malpractice lawsuit. The state Legislature has once again taken up bills that would make inadmissible in medical malpractice lawsuits any admissions of liability that doctors and other health care providers make to patients while apologizing or extending "benevolent" gestures of compassion.
Palomar Health CEO Michael Covert is certainly a standout in the State Controller's Office online database disclosing pay for local government employees. His pay eclipses almost all of the 740,000 employees statewide whose compensation is reported. Almost. With a new batch of data just uploaded for 2011, Covert's taxable wages ranked No. 2—for the third year running. The database was launched in 2010 in response to the outsize pay scandal involving the city administrator for the Los Angeles suburb of Bell, Robert Rizzo. Covert came in just below Rizzo for 2009 wages.
Massachusetts General Hospital wanted its 22,000 employees to watch an 11-minute video teaching the basics of customer service. But executives felt it would send a strange message to make niceness training mandatory—and then penalize staff for not participating. So instead, they offered employees a $250 bonus to view the video, an approach common in other industries and that proved to be an overwhelming success for the hospital.