An expert in tropical diseases will lead an elite team of researchers in establishing a unique center in Houston to study and develop vaccines for these afflictions, which affect millions of poor people worldwide. Peter Hotez, MD, who will join the staffs of Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine this summer, will serve as founding dean of a new, as yet unnamed, tropical disease research school at Baylor. It will be the only such institution in North or South America, said Hotez, who was in Houston for the announcement Wednesday. He is chairman of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and president of the nonprofit Sabin Vaccine Institute, named for polio vaccine developer Albert Sabin, MD. More than 20 researchers with the Sabin Institute's vaccine-development arm will come to Houston with Hotez. Other functions of the institute will remain in Washington.
Plans to open a medical school at UC Riverside next year appeared uncertain Wednesday after officials announced that the school had been denied initial accreditation because of concerns about the cash-strapped state's ability to provide funding. The first 50 students were expected to enroll next summer at the medical school, which would be the sixth in the UC system. The school, approved by UC regents in 2008, is intended to ease a physician shortage in the Inland Empire area and to bolster UC Riverside's academic reputation. UC officials have 30 days to appeal the denial of preliminary accreditation and to scramble for a commitment of about $10 million a year in state funding. If the effort fails, the first class won't start until at least 2013 as the school keeps trying, UC Riverside Chancellor Timothy P. White said. "We are going to redouble our efforts to seek these sustaining and recurring funds from the folks in Sacramento," White said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday afternoon. He acknowledged that it would be a tough task, given the state's deficit and continuing turmoil in Sacramento over the budget.
The House of Representatives gave final legislative approval early Wednesday morning for an $864 million proposal that would enlarge both the medical and dental schools at the University of Connecticut Health Center while constructing a new hospital on the Farmington campus. The chamber voted, 97 to 45, at about 2:10 a.m. after a lengthy debate that covered everything from finances to the future of bioscience in Connecticut. Most of the negative votes came from Republicans, but they were joined by Democrats. The measure now goes to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who will sign it. The plan by Malloy calls for adding 100 students to the medical school, 48 students to the dental school, and about 50 bioscience researchers in a comprehensive plan that would include new buildings and parking garages. The plan calls for creating 3,000 new construction jobs that would last for six years when the entire project would be completed in 2018.
Salem Hospital plans to switch to convict labor to clean its microfiber mop heads after scrapping its laundry contract with a private company. The job gradually will be turned over to inmates working at a commercial laundry at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, said Julie Howard, a spokeswoman for Salem Health. "We already contract with them to clean our bed linens and staff scrubs, and they are doing excellent work," she said. "We've been very happy with their attention to quality, the infection prevention that we require in a hospital." Concerns about the quality of mop-head cleaning provided by the hospital's private contractor, Aramark Uniform Services, prompted hospital officials to pull the plug on the arrangement, Howard said.
The fate of a new hospital in Westwood, NJ, is now in the hands of the state. Hackensack University Medical Center delivered its application for certificate of need on June 1, the final day the state Department of Health and Senior Services would accept requests to open an acute-care hospital in Bergen County. The proposed new 128-bed hospital at the site of the former Pascack Valley Hospital would cost $39.6 million to renovate and would open in late 2012 or early 2013. According to Department of Health and Senior Services spokeswoman Donna Leusner, the department will now review the application for completeness. Once the application is deemed complete in August, there will be a public hearing relatively close to the hospital, Leusner said, and the department will accept written statements from the public in regard to the application.
A report by McKinsey & Co. has found that 30% of employers are likely to stop offering workers health insurance after the bulk of the Obama administration's health overhaul takes effect in 2014. The findings come as a growing number of employers are seeking waivers from an early provision in the overhaul that requires them to enrich their benefits this year. At the end of April, the administration had granted 1,372 employers, unions and insurance companies one-year exemptions from the law's requirement that they not cap annual benefit payouts below $750,000 per person a year. But the law doesn't allow for such waivers starting in 2014, leaving all those entities—and other employers whose plans don't meet a slate of new requirements—to change their offerings or drop coverage. Previous research has suggested the number of employers who opt to drop coverage altogether in 2014 would be minimal.