A new charter high school designed to train nurses is expected to win final approval from the state Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education Thursday afternoon. The school, which would be public and paid for by taxpayers, is scheduled to open in downtown Providence in September, starting with 136 10th and 11th graders.Supporters of the Rhode Island Nurses Institute Middle College say the school will serve a dual purpose: help the state address a growing nurse shortage and provide a high-quality education to hundreds of students, many of whom come from low-income families and are stuck in low-performing schools. Students from across the state can apply. The first year's class is already full and there is a wait list of more than 20 students, say the school's sponsors.
You won't find an MRI machine or even a CT scanner in its emergency room. The patient rooms don't have suction tubes in the walls or fire-suppression sprinkler systems in the ceilings. Its hospital beds, circa 1950, look narrow and uncomfortable. Oxygen, when it's needed, is delivered from big, green portable tanks that stand sentry in each room. Welcome to the Bennett County Hospital, which looks much the same today as it did when it was built in 1954 as St. Anthony's Hospital by an order of Catholic nuns. "You're looking at what I like to call frontier medicine. It's antiquated," said George Minder, chief executive officer of the Bennett County Hospital and Nursing Home, which has struggled to stay solvent for decades and is now managed by a five-member community board. But while the hospital in Martin has seen few cosmetic updates in its 57 years, it continues to provide essential health care services – including an emergency room that is staffed 24 hours a day – as well as three ambulances and a medical laboratory that can do basic cultures, chemistry panels and blood counts.
For years, the Rochester-based Mayo Clinic has been at the forefront of using social media, with a popular YouTube channel, a Twitter account, and more than 53,000 connections on Facebook. The Clinic also produces its own podcast and blog, and in 2010, created the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media to help the clinic and other health care providers adopt social media tools. Now, officials at the clinic have created their very own social media community. Clinic officials believe the Mayo clinic online community is the first such online community created by a medical provider group or hospital system. The goal of the online community is to connect people who have already been through the Mayo Clinic with future patients facing similar health concerns. It's meant to be a place for community members to share information, support and encouragement. According to the Clinic, more than 500,000 unique patients from every U.S. state and nearly 150 countries visit one of the Mayo Clinic campuses in Arizona, Florida or Minnesota for diagnosis and treatment each year.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, seeking to close the book on its widely criticized $11 million payout to former chief executive Cleve L. Killingsworth, yesterday said it will refund $4.2 million to customers, an amount equal to the severance portion of Killingsworth's pay package. The move follows a four-month investigation by the Massachusetts attorney general's office, which found that while Killingsworth was entitled to the money under his contract, such generous severance terms don't serve the purposes of the nonprofit insurer and weaken the authority of its board. Killingsworth, who abruptly quit in March 2010, won't have to give back the severance money or any other part of his payout, which also included a salary and bonus. Blue Cross will deduct the $4.2 million from fourth-quarter earnings, crediting it to employer groups and, in some cases, individual customers, according to senior vice president Jay McQuaide.
Doctors, dentists and psychiatrists with the federal receiver's office overseeing inmate medical care are the highest paid state employees in California, according to government salary data the state controller's office released. Two prison doctors make more than $700,000 a year. Dozens of other prison medical personnel, some with the Department of Mental Health, make more than $300,000 a year. A top official with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection makes $309,000 annually. The controller's office began requesting the data in response to the compensation scandal in the Los Angeles County city of Bell. Residents there voted the entire city council out of office in March after learning that council members and other top officials were giving themselves enormous salaries and pensions. The people with the top four state salaries are two doctors, a dentist and a psychologist, all working for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, who were paid salaries ranging from $777,323 to $582,609.
As high-level budget talks drag on in Washington, the Medicaid program for the poor remains a prime candidate for cuts. In recent months, Republicans have criticized Medicaid for badly serving its target population. But a new study — the first of its kind in nearly four decades — finds that Medicaid is making a bigger impact than even some of its supporters may have realized. The study, being published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, has a distinctly bipartisan flavor. Among its authors are Katherine Baicker of Harvard, who was an economic adviser to President George W. Bush, and MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who has advised the Obama administration. Overall, researchers found that compared to people without insurance, those with Medicaid had better access to and used more healthcare; they were less likely to experience unpaid medical bills; they were more likely to report being in good health; and they were less likely to report feeling depressed.