Mexico's finance secretary says the swine flu outbreak has cost the Mexican economy at least $2.2 billion. Agustin Carstens says the government will implement a $1.3 billion stimulus package, aimed primarily at small businesses and the tourism industry, the sectors hardest hit by the epidemic.
An Australian hospital will investigate an incident in which staff declared a woman dead and notify her family, only to realize minutes later she was still breathing. Rita Ring was admitted to Innisfail Hospital from a local nursing home on May 3, and was wrongly declared dead shortly before midnight. Staff informed the 92-year-old woman's next of kin, but had to call back a short time later to inform them there had been a mistake. Ring died in the hospital three days later.
Innisfail Hospital is investigating the circumstances around the error, and has apologized to the family.
An ongoing shortage of nurses and other healthcare workers across Canada has led some rural community hospitals and other health facilities to down-size their services or temporarily close for short periods of time because they do not have the staff to cover shifts. The trend is forcing rural healthcare employers to find creative ways to attract nurses to rural areas.
In response to the number of patients seeking medical and surgical care overseas increasing in recent years, the American College of Surgeons studied the issue and developed an official "Statement on Medical and Surgical Tourism." The ACS statement "was developed with the patient's interests in mind," according to James Unti, MD, FACS, a medical associate with the ACS Nora Institute for Surgical Patient Safety.
President Obama appeared to put his faith in pledges from some of the healthcare interest groups that have pledged to cut the rate of growth of national healthcare spending by 1.5 percentage points each year—an amount that's equal to over $2 trillion. Administration allies cheered the news that the health lobby is eager to join reform negotiations, but many offered a cautionary note that warm words from the industry cannot be mistaken for enforceable policy change.
As walk-in clinics at retail stores offer convenient alternatives to doctors' offices and hospital emergency rooms, some hospitals are fighting back with walk-in clinics at some of those same retailers. Many primary-care doctors still denigrate the retail clinics as cheap, unworthy competitors, but hospitals see the clinics as a way to reach more patients and expand their business. And they argue that as President Obama and Congress warn of a shortage of primary-care physicians, the hospital-linked retail clinics are filling a vital public need.