The third chief executive in less than a year at Boca Raton (FL) Community Hospital is planning to bring the ailing hospital to profitability by 2010. It's a steep climb from a $120 million loss in the 2007-08 fiscal year that ended in June. But top executives see signs of recovery: The hospital suffered only a $2 million loss from July to September and is expected to see a $30 million operating loss for the 2008-09 fiscal year—half the amount compared with 2007.
After weighing possible locations for more than a year, Louisiana and federal leaders are expected to announce that they will build a new LSU-VA hospital campus in downtown New Orleans that will help lure top medical talent to the region and position the city as a hub for the biosciences. The announcement marks a major turning point for the region's economic recovery. Louisiana State University and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs plan to spend a combined $2 billion on their new hospitals. Together, they will provide a pipeline of 2,000 jobs in healthcare, research, and related services.
Upset over stalled contract negotiations, about 230 employees at Hastings, MN-based Regina Medical Center will begin a two-day strike. Their union is unhappy with the hospital's offers on pensions and health insurance. Nurses' aides, X-ray technicians, physical therapy aides, housekeepers, dietary workers, medical transcriptionists, operating room aides, and patient care technicians who belong to Service Employees International Union Healthcare Minnesota will participate.
Nevada's medical community is raising concerns about plans to cut state Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals for inpatient services by 14%. The reduction is nearly three times the 5% cut that resulted in the elimination of outpatient oncology and kidney dialysis programs at University Medical Center in Las Vegas. The additional Medicaid cuts could lead to closures of some rural hospitals, delays in care to the sick, emergency room overcrowding, and the elimination or reduction in services at for-profit hospitals, said Bill Welch, executive director of the Nevada Hospital Association.
With the healthcare of 345,000 vulnerable children and their parents at stake, Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell is engaged in an showdown with legislators and healthcare advocates. The Rell administration took a hard slap a week ago at critics of her Charter Oak Health Plan for uninsured adults, demanding the critics turn over e-mails and correspondence. By demanding their e-mails and correspondence, Rell made clear that she distrusted the motives of the many critics of Charter Oak, a new program she has linked to the much larger HUSKY.
An aging population, spiraling medical costs, and increasingly poor service are spurring more computer firms to bet on healthcare and what many of them see as a lucrative, but untapped, market.
Expectations for an overhaul of the U.S. health system following the election of Barack Obama as president and a desire of governments worldwide to drive costs of national health systems reinforce the belief that healthcare is an opportunity that tech companies should not underestimate.