The LSU public hospital system is cutting more than $29 million in the current fiscal year to cope with budget reductions made by Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration. Cuts will cause employee layoffs, fewer available hospital beds and program eliminations at the seven hospitals in LSU's Health Care Services Division, which has a $780 million annual budget. The hospitals are located in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, New Orleans, Houma, Bogalusa, Independence and Lake Charles.
Here's what this caper is about: Aquino, who was the Chief Executive Officer of Parkway Hospital in Queens, New York, learned that the State of New York was slating his hospital for closure in 2008. Apparently, Aquino wanted to keep his job—oh, and, sure, also keep the hospital open so that it could pay him. What was Aquino's alleged solution to the thorny issue of his institution's closing? According to prosecutors and plea agreements, Aquino caused Parkway Hospital to make $60,000 in payments to Adex Management Inc. ("Adex").
The Republican candidates starting the long-haul through the primary season have one thing in common—they all want to repeal the health reform law, the Affordable Care Act. It is the lens through which they view healthcare issues. But most of the candidates have offered few details on their websites about what they would replace it with in order to increase the number of those insured, reduce healthcare costs, and improve care quality. Likewise, they also have given little indication about whether they would continue to provide incentives to hospitals and physicians for adopting electronic health records.
In a bit of good news for Wisconsin's strained budget, Gov. Scott Walker's administration is scaling back by more than $300 million the two-year shortfall projected for state health programs for the poor. But a state health department spokeswoman said that to ensure the state health programs remain affordable, the Walker administration will still seek to proceed with a half-billion dollars in proposed cuts affecting tens of thousands of recipients.
Drug research, even from clinical trials sponsored by the federal government, routinely is suppressed, harming patients and increasing health care costs, according to new data highlighting an ethical controversy that continues to plague the field of medicine. "The current situation is a disservice to research participants, patients, health systems and the whole endeavor of clinical medicine," according to an editorial accompanying the papers published in the British Medical Journal.
A Tennessee-based company is the new owner of two more hospitals in northeastern Pennsylvania. Community Health Systems Inc. on Tuesday announced the acquisition of the 217-bed Moses Taylor Hospital in Scranton and the 25-bed Mid-Valley Hospital in Peckville. The $152 million deal was approved by a Lackawanna County judge last month. Community Health Systems, a for-profit company based near Nashville, says its subsidiaries now control substantially all of the Moses Taylor Health Care Health System.