The Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, based at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, was awarded the grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The foundation plans to award $500 million over the next 10 years for research on eliminating preventable harm in hospitals. Hopkins will put the grant toward a project aimed at reducing preventable patient harm during their hospital stay by working with engineers to create a system which can share information between the various medical devices used to treat patients in intensive care units.
Three patients treated at a northwest Kansas hospital in 2010 have tested positive for a strain of hepatitis C "closely related" to a cluster of cases in New Hampshire traced to a traveling hospital technician. Kansas officials notified more than 400 people last month that they may have been exposed to hepatitis C by a technician who worked at the Hays Medical Center's cardiac catheterization lab from May 24 to Sept. 22, 2010. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment said Tuesday that 375 former Hays Medical patients had submitted blood for testing as of Aug. 27. Of that number, 353 were negative for hepatitis C. Tests on the others are pending. Another 58 patients could not be tested because they are already deceased.
Iowa hospital executives want the state to accept hundreds of millions of dollars in extra federal Medicaid money under the national health reform program. Gov. Terry Branstad plans to decline the money, which would expand Medicaid to cover about 150,000 poor Iowa adults. Branstad is skeptical that the federal government can afford to keep its promise to pay at least 90 percent of the cost. The Iowa Hospital Association board recently voted unanimously to support expansion of Medicaid. Association members plan to aggressively lobby legislators on the subject. The group said turning down the federal money could cripple hospitals.
Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs will become part of University of Colorado Health, voters in the Front Range city decided Tuesday. Voters approved the lease of the city-owned hospital to UCH, a partnership comprised of University of Colorado Hospital and Poudre Valley Health System, passing the measure with an 82 percent approval rating. The vote means UCH will pay $1.7 billion over the life of the contract, including $74 million upfront. The addition of Memorial Hospital gives the health care group a presence from Colorado Springs to the Wyoming border. PVHS spent $300,000 in preparation of the Colorado Springs election.
Health insurance is expensive, costing employers $15,073 on average to cover one worker and the employee’s family. If companies with more than 50 workers stopped offering coverage, they would face a fine that is significantly smaller than that cost, at $2,000 per employee. Which makes this Towers-Watson survey all the more surprising: The consulting firm polled 512 companies that employed more than 1,000 workers each. These are companies that spend at least $5 million in health benefits annually. They were asked how likely it was that they would drop coverage in 2014 and send employers to the new health care exchanges being created to accommodate the law. Not a single employer said that scenario was "very likely." A mere 3 percent ranked it "somewhat likely."
The state announced yesterday the five health plans that have been selected to serve as many as 115,000 low-income seniors in Ohio enrolled in both Medicaid and Medicare. The managed-care contracts are worth up to $3.7 billion in Medicaid business alone. State officials did not have cost estimates for the Medicare program. Aetna Better Health of Ohio, Molina Healthcare, UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Ohio, Buckeye Community Health Plan Inc. and Caresource will manage care for "dual eligibles" in the Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Akron-Canton, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown areas.