Lost in the contract dispute between Clark County and the Service Employees International Union are real concerns that wages for the unionized nurses at University Medical Center are far below those of private hospitals. The result, the argument goes, is that private hospitals easily poach UMC's nurses by offering higher pay. That disparity in pay might now be addressed.Two weeks ago, Clark County commissioners, who are also UMC's board of trustees, accepted a report from the hospital on the income disparity. And they gave the hospital approval to increase the pay range for registered nurses.
Illinois state officials surprised hospital leaders last week by delivering a few million dollars in Medicaid reimbursement funds, though Illinois is still far behind in paying the bills owed to the health care providers. Hospitals belong to the long list of groups owed money across the state because Illinois is delaying payments to the organizations, in part to avoid dealing with a multibillion-dollar deficit. Groups in Winnebago County, including schools and nonprofit agencies, were owed more than $42 million as of early September, according to the Illinois comptroller's office. Overall, the state's backlog of bills hovered around $3.8 billion at the end of September.
Police in Vermont are barred from access to a key state database that tracks the prescribing of potentially addictive opiate drugs, even though the $392,371 in biennial funding the program receives comes from the federal Department of Justice. Instead, the database known as the prescription drug monitoring network is run by the state Health Department for the benefit of the state's medical community, said Barbara Cimaglio, deputy commissioner for substance abuse at the state Health Department. "It's really a tool to assist the physicians," Cimaglio said. "It's not a tool to routinely and swiftly identify people who are abusing medications."
Eye surgeons in Tennessee have begun a pre-emptive offensive against legislation to allow optometrists the right to do laser surgeries — even though optometrists say they aren't seeking any law change. Lasers are replacing scalpels in eye surgery with procedures that range from saving a patient's sight to freeing them from eyeglasses. Computer programs make some of those procedures seem as easy as pushing a button, but a laser is just as dangerous as a knife, said Dr. Rebecca J. Taylor, a Nashville ophthalmologist. "You laser the wrong area and in an instant you render someone blind and it's not retrievable," said Taylor, a medical doctor who completed a surgical residency at Vanderbilt University to become an ophthalmologist.
The board of Central Health, a taxing authority that oversees health care programs for low-income Travis County (TX) residents, weighed in as a group Saturday and embraced the idea of rebuilding University Medical Center Brackenridge, Austin's public hospital, which is owned by Central Health. Board members, attending a 5½-hour retreat to build consensus on their vision for a medical school, said they support a premier teaching facility and trauma center for training doctors in primary and specialty care, as well as teaching them to work in clinics that serve the poor. The board also said, among other goals, it wants to play an influential role in developing the medical school concept so doctors gain experience in its clinics and stay in the community, alleviating a shortage of physicians. The board said it placed a high priority on seeing that its patients are treated like others in the community, regardless of income.
As the Walgreen Company pushes its army of pharmacists into the role of medical care provider, it is bringing them out from their decades-old post behind the pharmacy counter and onto the sales floor. The pharmacy chain, based in Deerfield, Ill., and the nation's largest, has renovated 20 stores in the Chicago area and is converting more than 40 in Indianapolis to get the pharmacist closer to patients. Pharmacists in the revamped stores are being kept away from the telephone, where dealing with insurance coverage questions and other administrative tasks occupy 25 percent of their time, Walgreen says. "What we are seeing now is pharmacists should be using their knowledge to help consumers manage their medications appropriately," said Nimesh Jhaveri, executive director of pharmacy and health care experience at Walgreen.