Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has raised several concerns about the proposal to merge the UConn Health Center and Hartford Hospital. In a letter sent to the co-chairwomen of the legislature's higher education committee, Blumenthal wrote that the proposal would require the state to give up some of its authority, agree to an open-ended financial commitment, and give UConn authority to enter into contracts even if they violate the law.
The proposal also seeks to waive most required permitting processes and "constrains any meaningful review of critical licensing" for the new hospital that would be built, Blumenthal wrote.
More than 70 preachers and other clergy are leading an effort to find federal aid to save ailing Metro Nashville General Hospital at Meharry if local and state funding is cut. Nashville Mayor Karl Dean has written a letter to the hospital authority, which runs Metro General, saying a better way of funding the facility needs to be found. Dean said the city's financial considerations in the current economic climate will leave it unable to help the hospital make up a projected budget shortfall when the fiscal year ends on June 30.
Hundreds of medical records kept by a longtime Acton, MA, family doctor who abruptly closed his practice in 2008 are about to be destroyed, leaving patients without crucial information and exposing a gap in state law about who owns abandoned medical records. On April 8, a storage company is scheduled to discard the records and auction the equipment left by Ronald T. Moody, who was evicted from his office last September as state regulators pursued him for practicing without a license. Many of Moody's former patients have no idea that their records are slated for destruction. None has been notified, nor does the law require such notice.
At least 64 people have been infected with hepatitis C after receiving transfusions of tainted blood at a county hospital in southern China. The authorities at the Guizhou Province hospital traced the infections to contaminated blood from a single donor who had sold blood to the facility from 1998 to 2002. The police have detained the hospital's former chief on suspicion of illegally collecting and using the blood. Hospital officials also blamed improper screening of the blood supply for the spread of the infection.
Many people, just as they become eligible for Medicare, discover that the insurance rug has been pulled out from under them because some doctors are no longer accepting Medicare. This is because either they have opted out of the insurance system or they are not accepting new patients with Medicare coverage. The doctors cite low reimbursement rates and paperwork being too much of a hassle.
There are many ways that social media tools can benefit a hospital, but there's a powerful use that sometimes gets overlooked: crisis communications. For the past week Innovis Health in Fargo, ND, has been threatened by flooding from the Red River. For several days, Innovis was the only hospital fully open in Fargo and remains the site for Blackhawk helicopter evacuation landings, the Red Cross, a VA satellite office, and more. Innovis used social media for outreach communications, working around the clock to gather information from Innovis staff, write blog updates, and post to its Twitter feed.