The number of patients whose hospital records were improperly accessed by employees at the UCLA Hospital System has topped 1,000, said Kathleen Billingsley, director of the California Department of Public Health's Center for Healthcare Quality. The 1,041 breached patient records is up from 939 in the state's last report in August. The hospital said it has taken measures to ensure patient confidentiality, including increasing audits of employees who can access patient files and requiring employees to identify reasons for accessing clinical records.
Thomas Frist Jr., the sole co-founder of Nashville-based HCA still involved with the company, will resign from its board at the start of the new year, the latest step in a "changing of the guard" at HCA. Company officials confirmed that Frist will turn over his seat on the HCA board to his son, William R. Frist, a principal with a family investment firm, on Jan. 1. That will end the elder Frist's last formal role at the privately held company.
Pontiac, MI-based Mayor Clarence Phillips said he holds hope that state and federal officials will find a way to reopen North Oakland Medical Centers, a 336-bed hospital that has closed. North Oakland closed after a doctors' group trying to buy the hospital failed to find credit to purchase the hospital. Some 800 employees worked at the hospital. The hospital has struggled for years as Pontiac's population has shifted to a poorer, more uninsured community.
If they move forward with plans to build teaching hospitals in a historic New Orleans neighborhood, the Louisiana and federal governments would attempt to preserve several landmark buildings and integrate them into the footprint of the academic medical center. Consultants said at a public forum that they might spare the buildings from demolition if the buildings prove sound and if they can reasonably be incorporated into the design of the new hospitals. LSU and the federal Department of Veterans Affairs have planned for about two years to build adjoining hospitals near downtown Near Orleans to replace the medical centers each lost to Hurricane Katrina. Both institutions would save on operating costs by sharing some diagnostic equipment and clinical services, as well as parking and laundry.
For the second time in three years, a University of Kansas Hospital cancer patient has received tainted platelets from the Community Blood Center. In the first case, the patient died within 48 hours after receiving a transfusion laced with E. coli bacteria. In the second instance, which occurred Oct. 13, the patient spent days on a respirator and nearly died. The FDA's regional office visited KU's blood bank last week and has reviewed the Community Blood Center's policies. KU's transfusion committee also will review the hospital’s platelet safety procedures. The hospital will bring in national experts to review its blood safety policies.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and her Republican challenger, John Kennedy, each advocate a major reshaping of an American healthcare system. Kennedy, the state treasurer making his second run for the Senate, favors shifting more responsibility for obtaining health coverage onto individuals through changes to the federal tax code and by erasing federal barriers that prevent people from buying insurance across state lines. Landrieu, running for a third term, supports the bipartisan Healthy Americans Act, that would dismantle the current system of employer-based health coverage in favor of requiring people to buy health coverage from a pool of state-regulated private plans.