After a leadership tenure of fifteen years, Gary A. Carnes will be retiring as President and CEO of All Children's Hospital, with an anticipated effective date of February 29, 2012. Carnes announced his retirement on Jan. 19. Jonathan Ellen, the Vice Dean at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will serve as interim president. Carnes led All Children's through their merger with the Johns Hopkins Health System.
Bill Patten will move on to the CEO position at Powell Valley Healthcare. Since 2005, Patten has served as chief executive officer of St. John's Lutheran Hospital, a 25-bed medical facility in Libby, Montana. Patten will join Powell Valley on Feb. 27. Patten has 25 years of healthcare experience, including the past 15 years as chief executive officer at small, rural hospitals in the Western United States. Prior to that, he was CEO of Sitka Community Hospital, a 27-bed critical access hospital located in Sitka, Alaska. He also served as chief executive officer of Sedgwick County Health Center in Julesburg, Colorado.
Davis Regional Medical Center recently appointed Vince Cherry, Davis' CEO from 2000-2006, to return to the position Jan. 16. Cherry requested to be transferred from Health Management Associates, Davis' parent company, as soon as he learned the position at Davis Regional was vacant. Cherry brings years of experience working at Health Management Associates back to the regional level. HMA Vice President Steve Midkiff was interim CEO before Cherry's appointment. The previous CEO at Davis Regional, Andy Davis, left in November to pursue other opportunities within HMA.
Tenet Healthcare Corp. has signed a multiple-year agreement with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, but two of Tenet's hospitals in the St. Louis area are still struggling to renew their contracts with WellPoint health plans in Missouri. Under a new contract, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois members will have access beginning March 1 to health services at St. Louis University Hospital and Des Peres Hospital, which are both owned by Dallas-based Tenet.
Kaiser Permanente, one of the country's largest healthcare providers, plans to announce Thursday that it is converting its intravenous equipment to more eco-friendly alternatives free of two chemicals that have been shown to harm humans and the environment, officials said. Kaiser will buy IV solution bags that are 100 percent free of PVC and DEHP and intravenous tubing that is free of DEHP. The two chemicals are widely used in medical products. DEHP, or di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate, used to make plastic bags and tubing more pliable, has been linked to reproductive problems and other health effects. When PVC plastic is manufactured or incinerated, it creates dioxin pollution, a known carcinogen.
Personal health data on thousands of Minnesota patients was shared with a debt collection company that shouldn't have access to such information, Attorney General Lori Swanson said Thursday. Swanson filed a lawsuit against the company, Chicago-based Accretive Health, alleging that it failed to protect patient healthcare records and failed to disclose to patients how their records are used. The lawsuit stems from the theft last year in Minneapolis of a laptop belonging to an Accretive Health employee. The laptop contained unencrypted health data of about 23,500 Fairview Health Services and North Memorial Health Care patients.