Hundreds of highly qualified medical students could be absent from Illinois teaching hospitals starting in July because of delays in processing their licenses, the result of a dispute between lawmakers and the medical community about how to fund the state office that issues licenses for physicians and doctors-in-training. Thousands of applications are submitted by medical residents every spring for temporary licenses. But the office that handles those applications, the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation's medical unit, slashed more than half its employees last month because of financial woes.
Recent comments made by a number of leaders throughout the industry show clear discontentment with the state of health information exchanges. As William Yasnoff, MD, PhD, president of the Health Record Banking Alliance, recently pointed out, the current nationwide network of health information exchanges is an "unmitigated disaster," due primarily to obstacles in privacy, stakeholder cooperation and financial stability. Four experts sat down to discuss current data exchange trends and best practices at the eHealth Initiative Annual Conference.
Nearly 100 women, fearing that a Johns Hopkins gynecologist secretly videotaped and photographed them, contacted police Tuesday, and some potential victims reached out to private attorneys contemplating legal action. Police revealed Tuesday that at least some of the images were captured with a camera hidden in the top of a pen, and authorities were exploring whether the recordings had been distributed. The doctor, Nikita A. Levy, was found dead of an apparent suicide Monday. Police are treating the case as an open criminal investigation, and the Johns Hopkins board of trustees has opened a separate inquiry.
The Obama administration is moving forward with a contentious and long-dormant proposal to institute minimum wage and overtime standards for the in-home healthcare industry. Enactment of the regulations, which are under final review at the White House, would represent a major victory for unions that have fought for decades to win higher pay for direct-care aides.
An African-American nurse who is suing a Flint hospital because she said it agreed to a man's request that no African-American nurses care for his newborn recalled Monday that she was stunned by her employer's actions. "I didn't even know how to react," said Tonya Battle, 49, a veteran of the neonatal intensive care unit and a nearly 25-year employee of the Hurley Medical Center. Battle's lawsuit states a note was posted on the assignment clipboard reading "No African American nurse to take care of baby," according to the eight-page complaint against the medical center.
On a recent Saturday morning, an 11-year-old girl ran screaming from her room at Doernbecher Children's Hospital, the front of her T-shirt aflame. Now, as Ireland Lane undergoes skin grafts and burn treatment before heading home to Klamath Falls, state investigators are trying to determine how the fire happened—and whether a mix of flammable hand sanitizer and static electricity is to blame.