House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, responding to Republican criticism of closed-door meetings on healthcare legislation, said that she would strive for transparency as Democrats began their final push for a bill. President Barack Obama met with top House and Senate Democrats and urged them to move quickly in blending the healthcare bills passed by each chamber late last year. White House staff plan to meet as soon as Wednesday with House and Senate staff to begin discussin key differences, and House leaders plan to return to the White House Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reports.
More than 3 million Illinois residents, particularly those who buy health insurance on their own or get it from a small employer, will have the right to get their denied medical claims reviewed by an independent health expert under legislation signed into law by Gov. Pat Quinn, the Chicago Tribune reports. The bill allows consumers in state-regulated health plans who are denied a medical claim to request a review by a physician who is independent of the insurance company and at the plan's expense.
Hill Physicians Medical Group announced that UCSF Medical Group's physicians are now affiliated with Hill, following the successful completion of a transition plan announced last August. The affiliation took effect Jan. 1, and added more than 500 doctors to Hill's previous roster of 300 primary care doctors in San Francisco. The affiliation came after UCSF Medical Group and San Francisco's Brown & Toland Medical Group ended a long-running partnership in 2009.
Mount Sinai Medical Center's cardiovascular program has entered into a collaborative partnership with New York City-based Columbia University Medical Center. Seven physicians at Mount Sinai, in Miami Beach, have become faculty members at Columbia. Physicians from Mount Sinai and Columbia are regularly traveling for visits and engaged in conferences about patient care, clinical trials, improving operations and training residents, Mount Sinai President and CEO Steven Sonenreich told the South Florida Business Journal.
About 20% of the claims that Kansas City-area hospitals had submitted to insurers were at least 90 days past due in the middle of last year, according to a report by the Missouri Department of Insurance. The statewide average was about 26%, according to the study, which Gov. Jay Nixon mandated in a Sept. 11 executive order.
The Philadelphia-based American Board of Internal Medicine announced that it has filed a suit against a North Jersey company that provided test preparation for doctors. The suit, alleging copyright infringement and theft of trade secrets, accuses the company of stealing test questions with help from doctors taking the certification tests. The suit was filed against Arora Board Review in Livingston, NJ, its principal Rajender K. Arora, and Anise K. Kachadourian, a practicing physician.