Medical device maker Medtronic Inc. has announced that it will begin disclosing payments to U.S. physicians. Medtronic will begin capturing payment data for all of its businesses on Jan. 1, 2010, and will publicly report the information annually. The first disclosure will occur in March 2011, addressing payments made to doctors during 2010.
Officials in Louisville, KY, are looking at a new screening system for 911 calls as a way to reduce overcrowding in emergency rooms and limit ambulance runs. Hundreds of ambulances are sent out each year in the city to respond to ailments that might not require one, officials said. Many of them go to 911 operators either because the patients making the calls have limited health insurance or they have no doctor or one who is unavailable. If the system is enacted, 911 calls deemed low priority would be rerouted to a registered nurse, who would determine what care is needed.
Christopher M. O'Connor, the president of Massachusetts-based Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, is leaving the hospital immediately to pursue other opportunities, according to a spokeswoman for the six-hospital chain. O'Connor, who was head of the flagship hospital of Caritas Christi Health Care for 2 1/2 years, will continue in a limited consulting role at the institution. John J. Holiver, president of Caritas Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, will take the helm of St. Elizabeth's
Good healthcare is preventive, predictive, and personalized, a rarity today in a crisis-oriented care system far better at treating disease than keeping it at bay. To help change that, the Institute of Medicine has started a major push for what patients might call whole-body wellness care.
Massachusetts' healthcare system, which requires nearly everyone to carry insurance or face fines, is about to be put to the test by the bad economy. Unemployment in the state has climbed over the past three years from around 4.8% to close to 7%, meaning 72,000 more people are out of work now than when the law was signed in 2006. Many of the newly jobless may have to buy their own insurance.
Washington voters approved Initiative 1000 in November, which will allow physicians to legally prescribe lethal medication to competent, terminally ill patients given six months or less to live. The patient must be an adult Washington resident who voluntarily asks for the lethal drug and self-administers it. More than 110 hospice nurses, physicians, social workers, psychologists, and other professionals recently attended a seminar on the subject sponsored by the Washington State Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, along with the Washington State End of Life Consensus Coalition.