To healthcare reformers, Grand Junction, CO, is a place that provides high-quality healthcare at a fraction of the regular price. The local HMO offers prenatal care to all women in the county. Doctors evaluate themselves partly on the cost-effectiveness of treatments they prescribe. Nurses often check on patients home from the hospital to help prevent relapses. With President Obama set to hold a town hall there, many experts hope Grand Junction will offer lessons to the rest of the country.
Beverly, MA-based Northeast Health System, the parent of Beverly Hospital, said it is focusing its search for a new chief executive on Ohio hospital executive Ken Hanover, and is in the process of negotiating a contract with him. Hanover has been president and chief executive at Health Alliance in Cincinnati.
Jason Newsom, MD, railed against unhealthy food in his campaign to promote better eating in a town in Florida. Newsom is a 38-year-old former Army doctor who served in Iraq, and when he returned home to Panama City a few years ago to run the Bay County Health Department he started posting sardonic warnings on an electronic sign outside. When he parodied "America Runs on Dunkin'," the doughnut chain's slogan, with: "America Dies on Dunkin," he says he was forced to resign.
The cost of caring for patients who are near death accounts for a big piece of the government's medical spending, but a furor over a provision for government-paid counseling to plan for end-of-life care is steering lawmakers away from the issue. Inside a sweeping House bill to overhaul the health system is a provision that would require Medicare to pay physicians to counsel patients once every five years. During those sessions, doctors could discuss how patients can plan for such end-of-life decisions. Opponents say the provision shows that architects of the healthcare overhaul want to ration seniors' care.
At a town-hall meeting in Indiana, Rep. Joe Donnelly, a Democrat in a conservative district, was told by constituents they don't trust the government to be their doctor. Two hours before Donnelly's scheduled arrival in Kokoma, 75 people were lined up for 72 seats. By the meeting's start time of 6 p.m., the number had swelled to about 500. A number of people carried signs supporting an overhaul, but the majority of questioners voiced strong skepticism about handing more responsibility for healthcare to the government.
The American College of Surgeons is criticizing President Obama's comments about the financial incentives that might encourage a surgeon to amputate a diabetic's foot. He claimed the reimbursement is $30,000-$50,000, but the ACS points out that Medicare pays $740-$1,140 for the procedure.