The operations of Louisiana State University's public hospitals in New Orleans, Houma and Lafayette will be turned over to nonprofit corporations that run private hospitals in the three cities under outsourcing plans unveiled Monday by Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration. The lease arrangements were announced by Health and Hospitals Secretary Bruce Greenstein and LSU hospital chief Frank Opelka as part of an administration effort to cut state costs by turning over university-run healthcare services for the poor and uninsured to the private sector. The hospitals will maintain their roles of providing safety net care for those without insurance and of training new doctors and other healthcare professionals, Greenstein said.
The California medical board has repeatedly failed to protect patients from doctors suspected of abusing their prescribing powers, according to an LA Times investigation. The Times' examination of board records and county coroners' files from 2005 through 2011 found that At least 30 patients in Southern California died of drug overdoses or related causes while their doctors were under investigation for reckless prescribing. The medical board's president, Sharon Levine, a pediatrician who is an executive at Kaiser Permanente, declined to be interviewed.
Citing potential negative economic impact on a competing hospital, an administrative law judge is recommending the state reject plans by Shands Jacksonville to build a new hospital on the city's Northside. Judge W. David Watkins of Tallahassee published a 60-page ruling Friday that calls plans by Shands for a new 100-bed satellite hospital near the Jacksonville International Airport and the River City Marketplace too costly for Memorial Hospital. Memorial challenged preliminary approval by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration in December 2011.
An executive at Steward Health Care System told presidents of Steward's hospitals Monday that the Boston-based chain "unilaterally withdrew" from talks to acquire Mercy Health System in Maine after concluding Mercy had misrepresented its finances. The account given in a confidential memo from Steward director of media relations Chris Murphy, obtained by the Globe, differed from a statement Steward and Mercy released jointly late Friday afternoon saying the letter of intent to merge had been terminated because the parties "were unable to come to a definitive agreement" during negotiations.
Top officials in Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration used personal email accounts to craft a media strategy for imposing hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid cuts—a method of communication that can make it more difficult to track under public records laws despite Jindal's pledge to bring more transparency to state government. Emails reviewed by The Associated Press reveal that non-state government email addresses were used dozens of times by state officials to communicate last summer about a public relations offensive for making $523 million in health care cuts.
The American Red Cross is one of the nation's most venerable and largest charitable organizations, founded in 1881, with revenues of $3.5 billion in 2010. That year, Red Cross CEO Gail J. McGovern took home total compensation of $1.04 million. Two executives at Lancaster General Health—CEO and President Tom Beeman and Executive Vice President Jan Bergen—got more. By nonprofit healthcare standards, top LGH officials were paid in line with industry norms. Those norms, say a growing legion of critics, are scandalous.