As striking workers circled outside Kaiser Permanente medical centers throughout Northern California on Tuesday, hospital and union leaders traded allegations about the motivations behind the bitter dispute. Much of the controversy centered around the striking nurses, who have a contract through 2014 but walked out in sympathy with mental health and optical workers who are negotiating a new contract. A hospital association ran a full-page newspaper advertisement claiming the nurses have no sympathy for patients and are only concerned about increasing their membership.
Calling it a "painful moment in our history," University of Michigan Health System CEO Ora Pescovitz wrote in a blog post Monday that the university has "identified significant problems" with the way it handled an allegation last May that child porn was found at U-M Hospital. Recently unsealed court records show that a physician found an illegal image May 23, spoke with her supervisors, and met with hospital security officials and the Office of the General Counsel about it. However, the incident wasn't reported to police until Nov. 21, when a hospital security official came forward.
A clinical decision support tool developed by researchers at Harvard-affiliated Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston can increase the completeness of patient problem lists in electronic health records (EHRs). Having all of a patient's diagnoses on a single list helps physicians provide better care, because they're more likely to treat a condition such as diabetes or hypertension if they're reminded of that problem when a patient visits.
Documents from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reveal it took Gaston Memorial Hospital staff some six hours to realize a nurse gave an emergency-room patient insulin instead of potassium. A spokeswoman with CaroMont Health, which operates the hospital, said the company may appeal some of the findings in the government's report as misleading, inaccurate, or based on insufficient facts.
Trustees at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center asked to consider a whopping $875,000 severance payout for its former CEO are balking at the package, sources told the Daily News. Some board members of the debt-burdened Bushwick hospital, which a state advisory panel has targeted for a three-way merger, have opposed paying 15 months of salary for former CEO Rajiv Garg. The hospital would also cover Garg's legal fees in an investigation of him and other former hospital higher-ups by the Brooklyn District Attorney.
Almost nothing that politicians are currently debating is likely to change the overall costs of care. What's merely at stake is the shell game about who appears to be paying. Hiding the redistribution inherent in American health care has a corrosive effect on our national dialogue.