Republicans in the House of Representatives will seek a permanent solution to scheduled steep cuts in physician payments from the federal Medicare health insurance plan for retirees and disabled people, a House committee chairman said on Wednesday. Rep. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told doctors he hopes to send so-called "Doc Fix" legislation to the House floor this summer that would repeal payment reductions enacted in 1997 as part of a law to balance the federal budget.
A hundred managers at Scripps Health jam shoulder-to-shoulder into a vending-machine break room in San Diego. CEO Chris Van Gorder goes at them like a football coach down by 3 at halftime. Van Gorder, an ex-cop turned hospital executive, rescued troubled Scripps from near insolvency a dozen years ago as its new CEO. Now, he's put Scripps in the middle of a cultural transformation aimed at saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year by—get this—coaxing physicians and managers at Scripps to work together, and standardizing care across every hospital in the system.
The United States is not immune from the risks associated from substandard and knock-off medications, according to a new report by the Institute of Medicine. While the risks are exponentially greater in developing countries, the report warns federal regulators that counterfeit drugs are a deadly reality in America as well. In the four months from September 2012 to January 2013, "negligent production" by a Massachusetts pharmacy sickened 600 people and killed 44, according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.
Massachusetts public health regulators Wednesday gave final approval to regulations that allow hospitals to share medications to address drug shortages worsened by the closure of two specialty pharmacies following last fall's national outbreak of fungal meningitis. The rules adopted by the state's Public Health Council, an appointed board of professors, clinicians, and public health advocates, are more sweeping than emergency measures adopted in November at the height of the meningitis outbreak.
Leaning into friendlier political terrain, a union for Minnesota nurses renewed its call Wednesday for state lawmakers to establish requirements that would dictate how hospitals staff their emergency rooms, childbirth wards and other units. The drive to impose minimum staffing levels in law has the union and hospitals bracing for a contentious fight, one that could also expose simmering divides between nurses who are represented by the Minnesota Nurses Association and those who are not. Minnesota would join California as the only states with such a law if new Democratic majorities and Gov. Mark Dayton go along.
South Dakota educators might consider shortening medical school to three years instead of four for students pursuing careers as family doctors. The change would be the latest effort of the Sanford-USD School of Medicine to move more physicians into cities and rural areas across the state. It would concern only those in family medicine and not others on specialty tracks such as surgery, which would remain four-year programs.