The West Penn Allegheny Health System reported a $17.4 million operating loss for the first quarter of the new fiscal year, while investment income fell from $7 million a year ago to $1 million. As a result, West Penn Allegheny has eliminated 300 full-time equivalent positions and reduced some employee benefits, including a restructuring of retirement benefits for nonunion employees that "yielded the largest savings" of the $23 million reduction in nonlabor costs.
Miami Beach-based Mount Sinai Medical Center is telling investors of its junk-rated bonds that it expects an operating loss of $18.5 million this year—twice as much as 2007. In addition, the hospital now projects an even greater loss next year—$19.7 million, according to hospital documents. In its third-quarter report, the hospital attributed most of the deepening losses to the hospital's shift toward employing more physicians, a move which accounted for 61% of the losses through the third quarter.
Officials at Adventist HealthCare have announced that they will continue with plans to build a hospital in Clarksburg, MD, despite a rival's proposal to build a hospital a few miles away from their site. The decision sets up a battle between Adventist and Holy Cross Hospital, two nonprofit healthcare giants in Maryland's Montgomery County. It is unlikely that two hospitals would be built so close together, and the winner will be decided by state officials.
Medical and surgical residents in hospitals should work no more than 16 hours without taking a mandatory five-hour sleep break, and they should get one full day off a week and at least two back-to-back days off a month, a panel of experts at the Institute of Medicine has recommended. The experts proposed work rules for physicians-in-training that are more restrictive than those that went into effect in 2003 but are widely violated. The panel also urged greater supervision of doctors in residencies.
Lawyers for the nine cardiologists who were suspended in 2004 from performing angioplasties at Hudson, FL-based Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point are now accusing the hospital of racial discrimination. Nine lawsuits say the hospital and its parent chain, HCA Inc., revoked the doctors' privileges and then failed to provide them with an appropriate appeal process because of their "race and ethnic characteristics." Five of the cardiologists are Indian, three are Arab, and one is Hispanic. In a written statement, hospital spokesman Kurt Conover said the suspensions resulted from a quality review by a third party of the hospital's catheterization lab.
Enrollment in Kentucky's Medicaid program is growing at an unprecedented rate of 3,000 members a month, creating a crisis for a state already struggling with a projected $456 million revenue shortfall. State officials blame the economy and job losses for record numbers of people signing up for the program. Medicaid Commissioner Elizabeth Johnson said her department had projected a growth rate of 1,000 people per month for the program, but "it just keeps going up."