Panel says New Jersey won't save all hospitals

A commission appointed by New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine has recommended that the state establish guidelines for identifying hospitals in financial distress that are worth helping, and those are that are not. Hospitals deemed essential would then be propped by state grants and loans, with what the state health commissioner described as an early-warning system. The report did not spell out which hospitals should be shuttered, but said that a good number of New Jersey's 78 hospitals were poorly managed and inefficient, and that a "large number of hospitals appear headed toward distress in the next few years."