Ninety-nine days after it was evacuated in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Bellevue Hospital Center fully reopened on Thursday. Bellevue, New York City's flagship public hospital, had been reopening piecemeal, but it has now resumed its status as a Level 1 trauma center and opened all 828 inpatient beds. Bellevue was evacuated for the first time in its history on Oct. 31, two days after the storm, after its basement flooded with millions of gallons of water and fuel pumps for its backup power generators failed. Three hundred patients were evacuated that day and into the night.
Reps. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) and Joe Heck (R-Nev.) will take another stab at permanently repealing the Medicare payment rate that constantly threatens doctors with substantial payment cuts. The bipartisan duo introduced a bill Wednesday to repeal the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula. The bill aims to replace the SGR with a system that rewards doctors based on the health of their patients, rather than paying for each service a doctor performs.
Hoping to bring billions in federal funding to his state while shielding himself from the political pain of complying with Obamacare, Ohio Gov. John Kasich has spent the past few months reaching out to some odd allies that would support the Medicaid expansion. The Republican administration worked shoulder to shoulder with Obamacare supporters and opponents, crafting a lobbying campaign aimed at making a key portion of the health overhaul more palatable to businesses and legislators.
Since Patrick J. Geraghty arrived here a year and a half ago to lead the state's largest health insurer, Florida Blue, he has expanded its operations in Medicare and Medicaid, entered arrangements with hospitals and doctors, bought a medical group, and dabbled with a new private sector marketplace that allows employees to choose plans from different insurance companies. Insurance companies across the country, whether national profit-making players like WellPoint and UnitedHealth Group or nonprofit Blue Cross plans in states like Arizona and Michigan, are undergoing radical change as a result. After years of focusing on selling plans to employers, rather than individual consumers, the insurers must alter course.
Hospital staff, elected officials and community members rallied last month to try to save Long Island College Hospital. It was a fight they've waged before. But now, it appears likely that the 150-year-old Cobble Hill medical institution known as LICH will close for good. "It was my assessment that looking at Long Island College Hospital, that we were losing so much money that it was going to damage the system itself," said Dr. John Williams, president of SUNY Downstate. "So I had to make a very tough decision." "If you look at my budget, 75 percent of my budget goes to payroll and benefits," he said. "That means you operate a hospital on 25 percent. That's a very, very difficult thing to do."
The Prime Healthcare Services hospital chain has acknowledged it is the target of two federal investigations: a U.S. Justice Department probe of its Medicare billings and an inquiry into alleged violations of patient confidentiality laws. The San Bernardino County-based company disclosed the investigations in a Jan. 2 filing with the state health department in Rhode Island, where Prime hopes to buy its 22nd hospital. Prime's filing marked the first time the company has said it is facing a federal investigation.