Balance billing is officially illegal in the state of California. The practice, which is when physicians bill patients for services not paid by a health insurer, had been common practice in some California facilities. Opponents of balance billing say the policy puts consumers in the middle of insurer/physician battles. The California Medical Association has bought suit against the state's Department of Managed Care in hopes of reversing the state's decision.
About 500 University of Pittsburgh Medical Center employees are being laid off as part of the health system's ongoing cost savings initiatives. The layoffs are "almost entirely non-clinical, administrative and managerial positions" and are occurring systemwide, said a UPMC spokesman. UPMC employs about 50,000 workers and, despite the layoffs, it expects to hire more than 3,000 new employees this year, he added.
Ascension Health will provide Caritas Christi with $100 million in funding, raising the possibility that Ascension could eventually take over the six-hospital chain owned by the Archdiocese of Boston. St. Louis-based Ascension agreed to buy $100 million in low-interest bonds from Caritas Christi to help shore up Caritas Christi's finances and improve its network of hospitals, which include St. Elizabeth's Medical Center and Carney Hospital. Caritas Christi is New England's second-largest hospital system behind Partners HealthCare.
In the past decade, baseball has experienced a data-driven information revolution, and numbers-crunchers now routinely use statistics to put better teams on the field for less money. In this opinion piece for the New York Times, Billy Beane, Newt Gingrich, and John Kerry say the United States' overpriced, underperforming healthcare system needs a similar revolution.
Federal prosecutors have broadened their investigation of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration, subpoenaing records of ties between his lobbyist friend and a hospital that got a favorable decision from a state board allegedly controlled by convicted influence peddler Antoin "Tony" Rezko. The subpoena delivered to Provena Hospital sought information about the hospital's relationship to John Wyma, a close friend of the governor. Wyma was registered to represent Provena when it got approval from the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board in April 2004 to proceed with development of an open-heart surgery unit in Elgin.
Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell postponed her plan to transfer low-income residents into the new Charter Oak health plan until February 2009. This will give members in the state-subsidized HUSKY plan more time to find doctors in Charter Oak and allow for a better transition, says the governor.