California-based healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente said it would eliminate more than 1,800 positions as it struggles with declining membership, uncertain healthcare reform, and shriveling Medicare reimbursement rates. Job reductions will occur within the next few months, and many of the purged positions are temporary, on-call, or short-hour. Most Kaiser medical centers in California will be affected.
Convincing seniors citizens, who are an influential group of voters, that there is a need for change in the U.S. health system is proving to be an uphill battle. Members of Congress have reported an outpouring of concern from their senior constituents. Rep. Eliot L. Engel of New York, for example, said his offices had received "hundreds of calls" from older people eager to understand how they might be affected by health reform.
University of California-San Francisco Medical Group and Hill Physicians Medical Group, the largest IPA in its region, announced they are joining forces as of Jan. 1. The new relationship between 1,500-physician UCSF Medical Group and 2,600-doctor Hill Physicians was described in an Aug. 11 statement as an "affiliation" that will provide access to primary care and specialty doctors for about 20,000 HMO enrollees in San Francisco.
Patients who fail to keep hospital appointments cost the UK's National Health Service more than £600 million a year, enough to run two medium-size hospitals, data has shown. Between 2007 and 2008, 6.5 million appointments were missed in the UK, with hospitals losing around £100 per patient in revenue. Young men in their early 20s are the worst offenders and people aged 70 to 74 are the most conscientious about keeping an appointment, the figures show.
An Orange County, CA, woman was sentenced to eight years in prison for recruiting people for unnecessary surgeries as part of a multi-state, $154-million medical insurance fraud scheme. Lilia Toscano, 41, pleaded guilty to 98 counts that included conspiracy, grand theft, tax evasion, insurance fraud and recruiting patients for a fee, the Orange County district attorney's office said. Toscano enlisted more than 245 people, most of them from California, to take part in the bogus surgeries in exchange for money or low-cost cosmetic surgeries.
While the commercial real estate industry is getting hammered, the one sliver of business that seems to be doing OK is space for medical offices. According to New York-based research firm Real Capital Analytics, medical office space is the sector with the smallest amount of troubled assets: 1% or nearly $200 million, compared to $18 billion for the traditional office sector.