Aetna has renewed a contract with South Seminole Behavioral Specialists, an Orlando Health physicians group for a period of three years. Aetna also recently renewed its hospital agreement with Orlando Health, a 1,780-bed system that includes Orlando Regional Medical Center, Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies, Lucerne Hospital, Dr. P. Phillips Hospital, South Lake Hospital, South Seminole Hospital, and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando.
The cost of employer-provided healthcare benefits in Colorado jumped 13.7% this year, the biggest rise since 2004, according to a survey by the Lockton Benefit Group. Part of the health insurance rate hike is being passed on to employees, the report showed. Almost 39% of companies in the survey have policies with deductibles of $500 or more, compared with the national average of $300. "Each year, the cost-shifting gets worse and worse," said Bill Lindsey, president of the Lockton Group in Denver, referring to higher premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket payments being passed through to employees.
The Whitmore Lake Health Clinic near Detroit has provided care for 38 years to uninsured and underinsured residents of Washtenaw and Livingston counties but needs to raise $110,000 to resolve a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service that could force its closing. The clinic's problems mushroomed two years ago when it failed to send payroll taxes to the IRS.
Medical science has learned a great deal about the causes of pain and ways to relieve it, pain experts say, but for a host of reasons, the treatment of pain and suffering has improved hardly at all in recent years. Hospitals do a little better than that in managing pain for patients with all kinds of illnesses, according to a survey in the New England Journal of Medicine.The survey of hospitals in 40 metropolitan areas by the Harvard School of Public Health found that one-third of patients felt that their pain wasn't well controlled. The percentage of those who were satisfied by their pain care ranged from 72% in Birmingham, AL, to 57% in New York City hospitals.
As Americans are cutting back on healthcare costs, doctors are working to keep their offices full by adding reminder calls for appointments, extended office hours, last-minute appointments and same-day test results. According to a survey of 75 physician practices, revenues are down 3.5% this year, compared with a rise of 6% last year, Dow Jones Newswires columnist Victoria Knight reports.
Doctors from Beaumont Hospital in Troy, Michigan, looked at more than 2,000 patient-satisfaction surveys from the first part of 2007 and found that patients whose stays in the ER lasted up to three and a half hours had satisfaction scores in the 83rd percentile as compared with patients at comparable ERs around the country. But for those who spent between three and a half and four hours, satisfaction plunged to the 49th percentile. And those who spent more than four hours had an average satisfaction score in the 24th percentile.