Massachusetts General Hospital in the next few weeks will launch a large, long-awaited test of whether a controversial cutting-edge proton beam therapy is more effective than standard radiation treatment for prostate cancer. The expensive therapy is being used across the country before it has been deemed superior to standard radiation treatment, which costs about half as much. For years, doctors and federal health agencies have called for a scientific study like the one led by Mass. General, which will enroll its first patients by early June.
St. Joseph's Mercy Health System in Hot Springs, Arkansas would have faced layoffs or cuts in services if it had continued in the Mercy Health System of Chesterfield, Mo., according to the corporation's president and CEO, Lynn Britton. Several people resigned from Mercy's local hospital board and from the national board to protest the move. Former board members were concerned about how the poor would be treated under the leadership of the for-profit Capella Healthcare.
The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services is investigating whether the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview violated federal law with its billing and collection practices in the emergency room. Officials from the Minnesota Department of Health performed an on-site survey of the Minneapolis hospital over three days last week on behalf of CMS, said Ryan Davenport, a Fairview spokesman. The visit was prompted, Davenport said, by concerns raised in an April report by Attorney General Lori Swanson, who alleged overly aggressive billing and collection tactics on the part of Fairview and a Chicago-based consultant called Accretive Health.
While most of the nation is still trying to claw its way out of the deep economic crater left by the recession, this onetime steel capital is already out—thanks largely to the relentless growth in healthcare jobs. Partly because of the outsized ambitions of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the healthcare industry has replaced manufacturing as the region's powerhouse. About 1 in 5 private-sector employees in the Pittsburgh area today works at a hospital, a doctor's office or in some other health services business. Among the concerns: overdependence on a rapidly shifting industry, huge nonprofits that don't generate much in tax revenue, and a business model that exacerbates the disparity in income among workers in different but similar jobs.
A new book, "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business," by New York Times writer Charles Duhigg, devotes an entire chapter to Paul O'Neill and his safety campaign. Using stories and research from the fields of psychology and neuroscience, Mr. Duhigg argues that much of our lives is ruled by unconscious habits, good and bad, but that by becoming consciously aware of the cues that trigger our habits and the rewards they provide, we can change bad practices into good ones.
More than 2,600 U.S. drug stores, or 4 percent of all retail pharmacies, may have suspicious or excessive billing to Medicare, government investigators said. Some pharmacies dispensed unusually high percentages of painkillers and other controlled substances or expensive brand- name drugs, according to a report today from the inspector general for the Health and Human Services Department