A budget meeting about Nashville's struggling safety-net hospital ended on an emotional note, with the city's finance director hotly accusing the hospital chief of distorting Mayor Karl Dean's position. The exchange came after a Metro Council midyear budget hearing with the city's hospital authority, which runs Nashville General Hospital at Meharry. Dean recently sent a letter to the authority chairman saying the city must find a better method of funding the heavily subsidized, cash-strapped medical center.
All Kids is Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's signature healthcare program, launched in July 2006, and it gained enormous attention nationally as the first state plan to offer the promise of universal healthcare coverage for children. A state official said that about 270,000 children have enrolled in All Kids since it began 2-1/2 years ago, but a recent Families USA report indicates that hundreds of thousands of children in the state remain without medical coverage.
A prominent spine surgeon and researcher at the University of Wisconsin received $19 million in payment over five years from spinal device maker Medtronic Inc., according to a senator who is investigating potential conflicts of interest in medicine.
The surgeon, Thomas Zdeblick, received the payments while helping Medtronic develop and promote a number of spinal products. Medtronic's $19 million in payments to Zdeblick from 2003 to 2007 went "greatly" beyond what was evident in disclosures he made to the university, Sen. Charles Grassley said in a Jan. 12 letter to the school's president.
House Democrats presented an $825 billion stimulus package that includes more government spending and less tax relief than President-elect Barack Obama had proposed. The bulk of the package—about $550 billion—would be used to build new schools and highways, invest in energy and healthcare projects and provide unemployment and health benefits for out-of-work Americans.
Seven states and two family-planning groups have asked a federal court to block a new federal regulation that protects health workers who refuse to provide care that they find objectionable.
In three lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court in Connecticut, the states and groups sought an immediate court order preventing the regulation from going into effect and a permanent decision voiding the rule. The lawsuit challenges the regulation on several grounds, charging that it is too vague and overbroad and conflicts with other federal laws and state laws.
Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center researchers recently showed healthcare workers there the importance of hand hygiene. A medical student examined a patient known to have a drug-resistant Staph on his skin with no sign of the infection, and placed her hand on a dish containing a jelly that promotes the growth of germs before washing her hands. She then washed her hands and pressed them into a separate dish. Within 24 hours, the germ contamination became evident.