A South Carolina hospital said it has notified 11 brain surgery patients that they could have been exposed to a rare brain disease through surgical instruments used on a patient who was later diagnosed with the fatal condition. Greenville Hospital System officials said the patient was found to suffer from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The CDC recommends that instruments that have come into contact with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease undergo additional sterilization procedures prescribed by the World Health Organization. In this case, because the Creutzfeldt-Jakob diagnosis wasn't known at the time of the patient's surgery, the instruments were "sterilized according to rigorous U.S. protocols" but did not undergo any extra disinfecting, a hospital spokeswoman said.
A year after a for-profit company took over Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center and vowed to shore up its finances, the hospital posted a 10 percent profit—more than four times the state average—and paid its investors $8.4 million, according to a draft financial report submitted to the state. But the audit also states that the 230-bed hospital in Secaucus defaulted on a loan and overdrew a bank account by $1 million in 2011. Employees say paychecks have bounced at least three times since December, prompting an investigation by the state Department of Labor.
The medical community in Jackson and Swain counties has renewed its call to part ways with Haywood Regional Medical Center less than three years after forging an alliance under the MedWest banner. The roots of an uprising took hold in the Jackson County medical community almost a year ago and came to a head in April when several doctors announced they were leaving, citing concerns with the hospital's direction as part of the MedWest trio. Specifically, Jackson doctors feared that Haywood would slowly usurp their own hospital's role. They claim their hospital had lost local control and that its best interests weren't being looked out for by MedWest as a whole.
Dr. Javier Saenz, a family physician in La Joya, has exhausted his personal savings and has had to extend his credit line to keep his small business afloat. Saenz, like many other Texas physicians, treats a disproportionately high number of the roughly 330,000 senior patients who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. On Jan. 1, Texas followed the lead of several other states by ending the practice of using Medicaid funds to pay for dual eligible patients' deductible, which is $140 this year. Lawmakers also changed doctors' co-pays for Medicare Part B services. The state now limits its reimbursements to doctors treating dual eligible patients to the Medicaid allowable, which tends to be lower than Medicare rates.
Boston-based for-profit hospital network Steward Health Care, in partnership with Landmark Medical Center, the hospital in receivership Steward is seeking to acquire, and United Nurses & Allied Professionals, the union representing workers at Landmark, have sought to pin the blame on the state’s largest health insurer for Landmark’s financial woes. After enduring two weeks of attacks in what he termed a "distasteful," "fear-mongering" and "mud-slinging" media campaign, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island President and CEO Peter Andruszkiewicz visited Providence Business News on July 31 to respond and present the health insurer's point of view.
Frustrated with a changing health care system that has resulted in longer workdays and less time with patients, a growing number of doctors in California and across the nation are turning to a new type of practice—concierge medicine. The model is simple: Doctors charge their patients an annual fee and in turn give them more time and attention. Rising costs and shrinking insurance reimbursements have prompted doctors to search for innovative ways to keep their solo practices afloat. Concierge medicine, practiced by more than 5,000 physicians nationwide, provides them with extra income and allows them to limit their patient rolls.