Financially ailing Southern Regional Medical Center has entered into a partnership with Emory Healthcare. The partnership, effective Oct. 1, involves integrated Southern Regional in to Emory Healthcare's network of four hospitals. Southern Regional will pay Emory an undisclosed management fee. Faced with a bleeding balance sheet, Southern Regional said last summer it is considering strategic options that could include a joint venture, or a sale. The health system operates the 331-bed Southern Regional Medical Center in Riverside, Ga. For Emory, the deal would give the health system a foothold in the southern part of metro Atlanta. It would also give Emory an edge over its fiercest rival, Piedmont Healthcare, which is a major health-care provider in Clayton County.
United Memorial Medical Center will "significantly expand its role in medical education" and recruit new doctors by becoming a teaching hospital, hospital officials said Monday morning. UMMC beginning in 2013 will establish a residency program that will bring young doctors to Batavia in hopes they stay and open their own primary care practices once their residency concludes. UMMC and Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine Family Residency Program, the largest in the country, have been working for about 15 months to establish a residency program in Batavia, UMMC CEO Mark Schoell said.
Marin General Hospital released a draft environmental impact report for a roughly $500 million rebuild project that will bring the 235-bed level III trauma center in line with state seismic measures while improving other features. The release of the draft EIR marks the first formal step by the hospital, overseen by the Marin Healthcare District, on the massive project, just weeks after it was declared the "prevailing party" in a dispute with Sutter Health, which operated the facility until 2010.
For the second time in three months, federal authorities have issued a hefty financial penalty stemming from a HIPAA compliance investigation after a relatively small breach. The Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights has entered a settlement with Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary that includes a $1.5 million penalty. The resolution agreement cites a number of HIPAA violations discovered during an OCR investigation into the 2010 theft of an unencrypted laptop.
Mississippi insurance commissioner Mike Chaney is in a tight spot. By law, he is required to implement Democratic President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul. But as a Republican from deeply conservative Mississippi—one of 26 states that sued Washington over Obama's Affordable Care Act—Chaney is a target of critics who say he is betraying his party. Chaney and health officials in as many as 24 Republican-controlled states are working behind the scenes to set up insurance exchanges that provide a market for individuals and small businesses to shop for affordable health coverage.
So far, only 13 states and the District of Columbia have told the Obama administration they intend to set up the insurance exchanges that are supposed to provide a marketplace for people to buy health plans. None are being watched as closely as California, whose singular challenges, from the size, diversity and geographic spread of its uninsured population to its vast budget problems, make it stand out. Many feel a successful rollout here could convince other states with high numbers of uninsured residents that the law can be made to work for them.