Nine months after scooping up 150 doctors from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's physician group, fast-growing Steward Health Care System has lured away more than 110 other healthcare providers affiliated with the giant Partners HealthCare System. Hawthorn Medical Associates, the largest multi-specialty practice in the New Bedford area, disclosed Wednesday that it has signed a 10-year affiliation deal with Steward, a Boston-based chain of 11 hospitals and other medical care facilities across Eastern Massachusetts. The agreement takes effect Jan 1. At the end of this year, Hawthorn will let its 14-year affiliation with Partners Community Healthcare, the chain's physician network, expire.
Three hospital groups plan to form an alliance to be called Hudson Health Partners LLC, bringing six facilities in three Hudson Valley counties together to pursue collaborations. A formal announcement has been scheduled for Wednesday by the partners, which are Saint Francis Hospital and Health Centers in the Town of Poughkeepsie, St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital in Newburgh, and Bon Secours Charity Health System, based in Suffern, Rockland County.
Cited by state regulators last spring for not having enough nurses on its staff, Manatee Memorial Hospital spent most of the summer under scrutiny for an assortment of other complaints that patients made to the state. Hospital inspectors said they found problems that ranged from rusty wheels on operating room equipment to lapses in infection control and a case of bed bugs. But regulators say all issues have now been resolved. The April visit was prompted by one or more complaints to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. Reviewing patient records, AHCA found failures to give proper medications and prevent falls, leading to an investigation into whether the hospital had enough nurses for its workload.
Louisiana State University's chief medical officer will temporarily oversee the state's public hospital system. Dr. Michael Kaiser will serve as interim CEO of the LSU system's Health Care Services Division. He replaces Dr. Roxane Townsend, who also was removed from her leadership roles over public hospitals in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Townsend's demotion is the second time in two weeks that a major healthcare official within the system has been ousted. The nature of Townsend's exit from her roles in the hospital system was unclear Wednesday. While Townsend said she had been asked to relinquish her role as interim CEO of the LSU Health Care Services Division, Opelka said she chose to step aside on her own.
Former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius offered praise Tuesday night for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's decision to sign into state law a bill delivering quality, secure healthcare to all residents of Massachusetts. Sebelius, in her job as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is a central player in implementation of the Affordable Care Act adopted in Obama's first term. She declared transformation of medical insurance in the United States a good thing "now matter who you are, what state of life you're in." Her speech was as much a briefing on the law's details as it was an appeal for support from those at the convention.
Record-keeping for a patient complication used by Medicare to determine how much hospitals get reimbursed is not comprehensive or accurate, undermining the policy's value, a new study suggests. In an effort to get more for their money, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)—as well as some individual insurance companies—don't reimburse hospitals for certain conditions listed on billing records that are costly and believed to be preventable. One such example is urinary tract infections (UTIs) acquired in the hospital as a result of using a urinary catheter.