Television commercials are expected to grow this summer in both numbers and criticism as detailed health bills emerge from Congress and dozens of interest groups, companies, and labor unions tussle over influencing lawmakers. Through June 27, $31 million has been spent for roughly 47,000 TV ads on healthcare this year, says Evan Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, a firm that tracks issue advertising. That's double the roughly $14 million the insurance industry spent in 1993 and 1994 for the famous "Harry and Louise" ads credited with helping kill President Bill Clinton's healthcare drive, but a fraction of the $250 million Tracey guesses will ultimately be spent this year.
Only 1.5% of the nation's roughly 6,000 hospitals use a comprehensive electronic record, and even that statistic belies how hard it will be for healthcare to jettison its 19th-century filing system by 2014. It took Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, for example, seven hard years and more than $10 million to evolve a system that lets its doctors check on patients with a few mouse clicks from anywhere and use speedily up-to-date records in directing their care. This article from the Associated Press charts Children's efforts.
For the last year, parents have been banned from sleeping with their sick babies at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia.
The hospital instituted the policy after three infants over three months were pronounced dead in the emergency room after bed sharing-related accidents at home. The hospital's ER typically gets one such death every couple of months. But the tragedies early last year inspired St. Christopher's nurses to propose that the hospital lead by example.
As of July 1, all nurses and caregivers in Pennsylvania are now largely immune from management requests to work "mandatory overtime." The extra hours, nurses say, were frequently tacked on the end of already long hospital shifts, jeopardizing patient care and making it tough to keep quality nurses. For much of the decade, nurses and the Service Employees International Union have been lobbying for a change in state law that would restrict hospitals' ability to force nurses and support staff to work overtime hours. Fourteen other states have similar laws and regulations on the books.
A Tennessee healthcare policy group plans to publicize the results of a springtime survey that showed a majority of small businesses want a larger government role in providing healthcare to more Americans, but many of them also have questions about cost and quality. The small-business survey found that 61% of 245 companies that responded to a survey mailed in March said they support a stronger government role in "guaranteeing access to quality affordable health care," according to the report's authors.
Thousands of patients face a reduction in state healthcare benefits through an effort under way this summer to re-evaluate TennCare coverage for 154,000 Tennesseans. Many of them are having their eligibility reviewed for the first time in decades. After a 22-year-old court order was lifted earlier this year, TennCare is now asking a group of people to prove that they are truly worthy of coverage. The group includes thousands of people with chronic medical conditions, including those with severe disabilities and mental illnesses.