An official Los Angeles County assessment has acknowledged for the first time that a woman who died after writhing in pain for nearly an hour on the waiting room floor of Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Medical Center could have been saved if she had been properly treated. The woman was captured on security videotape as a janitor mopped around her and a triage nurse dismissed her complaints. Her death helped to precipitate the closure of the hospital's emergency room and inpatient care after federal regulators determined that staffers had failed to deliver a minimum standard of care.
Nasvhille-based HCA Inc. is letting go an unspecified number of corporate employees, including more than 100 people from its information technology department. Ed Fishbough, a spokesman for HCA, said the layoffs affect all departments at HCA's corporate headquarters. In addition to the latest cuts, HCA recently said it would close its 38-bed Portland Medical Center in Sumner County, TN.
The United Automobile Workers union has announced that it would make major concessions in its contracts with the three Detroit auto companies to help them lobby Congress for $34 billion in federal aid. At a news conference UAW president Ron Gettelfinger said that his members were willing to sacrifice job security provisions and financing for retiree healthcare to keep General Motors and Chrysler out of bankruptcy. He also said the union would agree to delay the multibillion-dollar payments to a new retiree healthcare fund that the automakers were scheduled to start making in 2009.
England's National Health Service will have its first constitution that will set out the rights and responsibilities linked to entitlement to NHS care. The Bill will place a duty on all providers and commissioners of state healthcare to take it into account. The Bill, to be published by Health Secretary Alan Johnson, will also allow the further development of "personalized" health services and direct payments for healthcare.
Aetna, health insurer to about 300,000 people in the Tampa Bay, FL, area, has notified several employers that BayCare Health System hospitals may drop out of its network as of January. Aetna spokesman Walt Cherniak said he was optimistic that the two sides will cut a deal before Jan. 1, avoiding any interruption of service. But Isaac Mallah, a BayCare executive who negotiates managed-care contracts, said Aetna is asking for payment rates below the market rate for other large insurers, such as BlueCross BlueShield of Florida and UnitedHealthcare.
St. Vincent's Health System has notified the state of Alabama it still plans to spend $6.7 million to construct a freestanding emergency department on its One Nineteen Health and Wellness campus, but it will first use a six-month extension to evaluate changes in the marketplace. The four-hospital system said it will use the six-month extension to monitor the economy and its impact on building the proposed site before beginning construction.