With strained labor relations in the wake of 400 job cuts and leaders still grappling with a $26 million budget gap, there seems to be no panacea for the woes at Westchester Medical Center. The medical center is dealing with the same financial problems as other hospitals—declining Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements—but because it's a public-benefit corporation, it has the added pressure of state pension payments, said Kevin Dahill, president of Northern Metropolitan Hospital Association, which represents hospitals in the Hudson Valley.
Researchers at the University of Maryland's School of Nursing found that 55 percent of the 2,103 female nurses they surveyed were obese, citing job stress and the effect on sleep of long, irregular work hours as the cause. The study, which measured obesity using estimates of body mass index, found that nursing schedules affected not only the health of the nurses but the quality of patient care.
It's been some time since the North Brookfield Emergency Medical Service has been on sound financial footing, and its future is uncertain at best. And among private, nonprofit ambulance services in Central Massachusetts, that is more and more the norm, rather than the exception. In a league of their own, the nonprofits don't have the revenue stream of private "for-profit" ambulance services that do more patient transports than emergency runs, nor do they have the access of municipal ambulance services to taxpayer dollars.
Medicare patients flooded two new clinics targeting the older population when they opened in Anchorage last year—most other primary care doctors wouldn't take the federal insurance for seniors because they say Medicare pays too little. Recently, the demand to get into the clinics has eased, and clinic officials are beginning to wonder: What happened to the rest of the Medicare patients? Are they finding doctors Outside where they go in winter? Are they seeing specialists like cardiologists and pulmonologists for all of their needs? Are they just not sick?
Gov. Paul LePage's attempt to balance the state's books by overhauling MaineCare unfairly passes the buck to local governments, hospitals and social service agencies, Portland Mayor Michael Brennan said Monday. LePage's plan eliminates $2 million from city programs and includes $20 million in cuts to Portland hospitals, Brennan said at his first news conference since taking office in December.
Limited data on 1,219 University of Miami patients was stolen in November when someone broke the back window of a pathologist's car and took a briefcase that contained a flash drive. The drive contained information on the patients' age, sex, diagnosis and treatment information from 2005 to 2011, UM said in a press release late Friday afternoon. No financial information or Social Security numbers were on the drive, the university said.