As Grady Memorial Hospital's new CEO prepares to take the reins this fall, the Texas hospital he comes from is in danger of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding after inspectors identified widespread problems putting patients at serious risk. During an extensive survey of Dallas' Parkland Memorial Hospital in July, state inspectors found expired medications, employees failing to wash their hands, patients lost in hallways and inadequate screening of emergency room patients, among other issues. Consequently, federal regulators have threatened to cut off the public hospital's Medicare funding if the problems aren't addressed by Friday. Also this week, Parkland's governing board announced the hospital's CEO will be replaced when his contract expires at the end of the year. John Haupert, who will become Grady's top executive in October, has served as Parkland's COO since 2006, making him the hospital's second in command.
Federal officials said they have become increasingly concerned about the risks of transmitting blood-borne viruses when diabetics are assisted with testing their blood sugar levels and insulin injections, and equipment is unsafely reused with multiple patient. Outbreaks of hepatitis B associated with blood sugar monitoring have been identified with increasing regularity, particularly in long-term care settings such as nursing homes and assisted living facilities, where residents often require assistance with testing and insulin injections, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the past 10 years, at least 15 hepatitis B outbreaks have been associated with providers failing to follow basic principles of infection control when assisting with blood glucose monitoring. Because of underreporting and under-recognition of infection, the number of outbreaks likely has been underestimated, the CDC says. Safe use of diabetes management equipment is a major concern as more Americans are diagnosed with the disease and as aging boomers move into assisted living facilities, said Joe Perz, an epidemiologist in the CDC's Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion. "This is what we call infection control 101," he said. "One of the most common myths is that contamination is limited to the needle. An insulin cartridge is a form of syringe. And a syringe and needle should be seen as a single device. One can contaminate the other."
The number of city residents qualifying for Medicaid has hit a record that's likely to go even higher next year when enrollment will almost certainly reach the milestone 3 million mark -- or more than 37% of the population, officials said yesterday. As of July, a record 2,927,952 people here were getting their health insurance covered by the government. Although the numbers fluctuate slightly from month to month, the annual trend is headed in one direction: up. Five years ago, in July 2006, the city's Medicaid rolls stood at 2,573,610. Robert Doar, commissioner of the city's Human Resources Administration, which oversees Medicaid, said the steady increases are evidence that low-income workers are becoming dependent on the government for medical insurance as more and more employers drop health coverage. "The use of Medicaid as a work support for low-income workers is very much a part of what's going on in the city and the rest of the country as well," Doar said. "We think it's an important expenditure. It allows people to take employment that doesn't provide health insurance."
Florida's prescription-drug-monitoring database, which advocates say will help discourage doctor shopping and deter physicians from over-prescribing, is slated to launch today -- after an effort by Gov. Rick Scott earlier this year to kill the program. Supporters of the database have touted it as a key tool in combating Florida's prescription-drug epidemic. Law enforcers say one of the reasons so many drug abusers and dealers travel to Florida for their prescriptions is because their home state already has a similar monitoring program. In Florida, abusers have been able to buy powerful, addictive painkillers and sedatives at medical clinics with relative ease. They can pay for their visits with cash and often receive little or no true medical evaluation at the rogue clinics, known as pill mills. Last year, 90 of the top 100 oxycodone-purchasing doctors in the nation were from Florida. Supporters of the database contend tracking prescribing history in Florida will deter drug abusers and unscrupulous physicians.
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's EHR Association has responded to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services proposed rules for the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System for 2012. The association asked CMS Administrator Donald M. Berwick, MD, to reconsider its proposal to require the submission of patient-level data as it pilots electronic submissions of clinical quality measures based on the burden it would impose on provider organizations and other considerations. "Our comments on these lengthy proposed rules focus on issues related to EHRs," said Mark Segal, EHR Association past vice chair and a member of the EHR Association executive committee and vice president, government and industry affairs at GE Healthcare IT. Segal added, "Although we're supportive of many of the proposed changes, we have serious concerns about the complexity and overhead of reporting discrete patient-level data for quality measures, rather than summary data, as is the case today. Other aspects of the proposed changes for 2012 make a lot of sense.
Despite being rejected by identical 8-1 preliminary votes in June, the rival health systems that want to build new hospitals in Crystal Lake and Huntley hope they can persuade the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board this fall that one or both of their projects are needed. But board members could decide that the Huntley proposal would be too big to avoid robbing existing facilities such as Elgin's Sherman Hospital of their patients, while the Crystal Lake proposal would be too small to be efficient. One of the proposals has been changed considerably. Mercy Health System originally had wanted to build a $199 million, 128-bed hospital and physician clinic at Route 31 and Three Oaks Road in Crystal Lake Road. But Mercy officials recently withdrew that request and notified the health board's staff recently that they now hope to build a hospital with only 70 beds that would cost only $115 million.