A new urgent care and walk-in center in Miami Shores, FL, promises to offer faster, more affordable care than emergency room visits. The recently opened center provides routine clinical and diagnostic services, and patients needing serious medical attention can be monitored with machines like EKGs until they can be transferred to a hospital.
Over the last two years, three-quarters of San Francisco's uninsured adults have enrolled in a public program that guarantees access to medical services, an effort that is being touted as a national model during the debate over healthcare reform. More than 46,000 adults have enrolled in Healthy San Francisco since it was launched, and the first-in-the- nation, city-run universal healthcare effort has received high marks in recent independent studies.
Massachusetts healthcare executives are lobbying legislators to move cautiously before embracing a proposal to transform the way hospitals and doctors are paid. Three months after a state commission proposed the plan to control exploding healthcare costs within five years, many hospital executives and doctors call it unrealistic, and say it could bankrupt some providers and compromise patient care if implemented too quickly and without major changes.
Physician's personal information, including Social Security numbers, may have been compromised after a laptop containing the data was stolen in August from an employee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association's national headquarters in Chicago. The breach involves "tens of thousands" of physicians nationwide, although the precise number is unclear, according to a national Blue Cross-Blue Shield spokesman. Thirty-nine affiliates feed information about providers into a database maintained by the association's national headquarters.
The U.S. government is expecting delivery starting this week of enough doses of the new swine-flu vaccine for nearly every American who wants it, but state and local budget cuts coupled with limits on who can administer the vaccine could slow the campaign. A second wave of the H1N1 virus is widespread across more than half of U.S. states, but it will be weeks before millions of people who want shots can get them. Manufacturers are still producing the 250 million doses the government has ordered, and state health officials must then determine where to distribute them.
India will play a significant role in reducing healthcare costs in the United States as India's healthcare market expands, General Electric Chief Executive Jeffrey R. Immelt predicts. The Indian healthcare industry is "on the verge of substantial growth," Immelt said, adding that healthcare products and services developed cheaply in the United States will be exported to Western markets, cutting prices there.