Hartford, CT-based St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center confirmed that it will eliminate 50 positions, mostly employees who don't deal directly with patients. The job cuts come as the St. Francis takes steps to "stabilize" its expenses and prepares for the upcoming fiscal year, hospital representatives said. "This will not impact the level of care our healthcare workers provide to patients every day," the hospital said in a statement.
As many as 10,000 Indiana children have become eligible for the State Children's Health Insurance Program under a recently approved expansion, state officials announced. The expansion of eligibility to children up to age 19 in households earning up to 2 times the federal poverty level was approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in May. The new eligibility level is a sliding scale that includes families of two earning up to $35,000 per year and families of four earning up to $53,000.
Executive physicals are marketed as the ultimate medical checkups for consumers. In these one- or two-day sessions, executives undergo a battery of high- and low-tech medical tests and comprehensive evaluations by physicians. But Brian Rank, MD, medical director of HealthPartners Medical Group and Clinics of Minnesota, argues they do not live up to their promise in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Rank says the physicals are often just expensive, unnecessary tests.
Two Massachusetts labor groups say they have launched a website to monitor treatment of patients and employees at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The two groups said the Boston hospital overcharges patients and pushes caregivers to work long hours. The website will also allow viewers to post their experiences at Beth Israel Deaconess, the groups said.
In hospitals' war against drug-resistant superbugs, gram-negative bacteria is emerging as a deadly threat to the sickest and most vulnerable patients. The scourge of what was once thought to be a fairly benign class of bacteria is throwing a new wrench into efforts to contain the spread of deadly infections. While they don't cause disease in healthy people, infections by gram-negative bacteria can be devastating for those with weak immune systems.
U.S. health officials are giving nearly $3 million to the American Hospital Association to help reduce central line-associated bloodstream infections in hospital intensive care units. The grant from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality will be used over three years to roll out a program designed to reduce these infections nationwide. When the safety program was tested in more than 100 Michigan intensive care units, infection rates dropped dramatically. Over three months, more than 50% of the participating hospitals saw their ICU infection rates drop to zero.