Jean Haynes has been named CEO for Geisinger Health Plan, Geisinger Indemnity Insurance Company, and Geisinger Quality Options, Inc.; and executive vice president, insurance operations for Geisinger Health System. She will join Geisinger on Sept. 28.Most recently, she served as executive director of Boston Medical Center HealthNet.
Methodist Health System has named Nancy E. Simon as senior vice president/CNO for Methodist Health System as well as CNO for Methodist Dallas Medical Center. Simon begins the new position in October and will oversee the daily operational responsibilities for the nursing division at Methodist Dallas, plus system-wide duties involving staffing, fiscal management, and regulatory compliance of nursing services and other patient care departments for the hospitals within Methodist Health System.
Doctors are navigating through testing and treatment options for patients who may suffer from the pandemic flu, which so far has proved to be no more serious than a case of the seasonal flu—unpleasant, inconvenient, and contagious, but most people get over it. Health officials, who are worried about overwhelmed doctors and emergency rooms, stress that people should call the primary-care doctor before making an appointment. Their message: Take precautions against spreading the virus and don't panic.
Some experts say high costs for patients at big-city hospitals reflect a free-spending, out-of-control medical marketplace. Others say medical costs are higher in urban areas because the poor need more care and the rich demand it. Others say the profit motive is at play. Still others say that when lives are at stake, cost should not be an issue. Whatever the reason, the question itself has taken on added importance as the Obama administration pushes a massive expansion of medical care to the uninsured.
Few dispute the prowess of The Mayo Clinic, which brings in $9 billion in revenue a year and hosts 250 surgeries a day. But a battle is underway among healthcare experts and lawmakers over whether its success can be so easily replicated. Before embracing a fundamentally new approach to healthcare, dissenting experts and lawmakers say, Congress should scrutinize the assumption that a Mayo-type model is the answer.
Keep going. You don't have to fix all of it now. Just please don't let it stall. That's the essence of the message that Senate Democratic leaders have for their Finance Committee senators, who plan to start voting Tuesday on a remake of the nation's healthcare system. Democrats on the pivotal committee are disappointed with the bill from the chairman, Sen. Max Baucus. Republicans see a chance to deliver a stunning blow to President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.