California dominates the pay rankings for several lines of work, so it comes as no shock that California markets set the U.S. pace for health-care salaries. But Alaska? Its strong performance is much more surprising. On Numbers has analyzed compensation data for two closely related employment sectors—health-care practitioners and support staffers—in 406 metropolitan areas and divisions.
I didn't know much about the patient—just that he'd showed up on my floor the previous evening after some confusion about whether his room was ready. When I went into his room that morning, he was still asleep. I gently roused him while his doctor, who had followed me in, explained that he needed to do a physical exam. The patient, suddenly fully awake, challenged him: "Are you going to examine me or are you just going to stand there and talk about it?" His voice had an edge to it that, I'll reluctantly admit, scared me, especially when he quickly got up out of the bed and started yelling at the doctor and me.
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?