If proposed Florida budget cuts to Medicaid take effect, patients could face higher hospital bills and more crowded emergency rooms, according to hospital leaders. Hospitals may also have to end some services or cut back on planned expansions, they added. State lawmakers have proposed cutting millions of dollars in hospital care for the poor: The Senate would cut more than $506-million, while the House would cut more than $468-million. Lawmakers want to reduce the amount the state pays hospitals for patients of Medicaid and two special programs for the aged and disabled.
Corporate and government documents from Vioxx lawsuits indicate that Merck & Co. apparently downplayed evidence showing the painkiller tripled the risk of death in Alzheimer's-prone patients. Doctors involved in the analyses say the trove of information that Merck was compelled to produce offers a window into the world of billion-dollar drugs and the lengths to which a company will go to advance and protect its interests.
In this opinion piece published in the Los Angeles Times, internist Albert Fuchs says the only way a doctor can do a good job and still make a living is to reject insurers. Fuchs says that most are awful at serving their patients, because even the best medical schools give short shrift to practice management. But, Fuchs notes, physicians are not entirely to blame. With insurance companies dictating how much doctors can charge for services as diverse as a routine checkup or an appendectomy, there is only one way for a doctor to increase income: increase volume, he says.
Despite major administrative changes at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital, the hospital's finance chief projects that the facility will run a deficit of $18 million to $43 million in 2008. On the higher end, that loss in a $618 million budget nearly matches the 2007 shortage and ranks among the largest in the hospital's history. Hospital officials say that while the hospital is turning around, major challenges such as rising healthcare costs, dwindling government aid and old equipment remain.
To meet patient demand, Snellville, GA-based Emory Eastside Medical Center is planning a $100 million expansion that will increase capacity by more than a third. The project will add 72 beds, bringing the total to 282. The expansion, which also will include additional parking and a medical office building, could create between 300 and 400 new jobs, according to a medical center spokesman. The project's centerpiece is a four-story tower that would house three patient floors with 24 beds each.
Healthcare providers don't do enough to collect on many payable bills or to provide government assistance or charity care to patients, according to a study by Telagent Inc. Telagent's analysis of account balances from 40 providers nationwide found that about half of patient accounts with some capacity to pay for services were written off when they could have been re-billed or outsourced for collections. Telagent works with healthcare companies to improve collections.
A Cook County, IL, judge may have hindered Gov. Rod Blagojevich's efforts to broadly expand state-subsidized healthcare, but the judge also allowed the governor to move forward on his expansion of a program to screen uninsured Illinois women for breast and cervical cancer. The rulings stem from a lawsuit seeking to block the Blagojevich's healthcare expansions, including a plan to let 147,000 parents and caretakers buy discounted health insurance through the state's FamilyCare program. A temporary injunction issued by the judge could hold up the FamilyCare expansion.
Medical information such as Social Security numbers, pharmacy records and other personal health data from about 130,000 WellPoint Inc. patients may have been accessed via the Internet. WellPoint said customers in several states had information exposed in the last year because two computer servers maintained by a third-party vendor "were not properly secured for a period of time." WellPoint has been notifying customers via letters.
An attempt to organize nurses in Ohio is pitting the Service Employees International Union and the California Nurses Association against each other. The dispute between two of the nation's largest labor groups stems from an effort by both unions to organize 8,000 nurses at nine Catholic Healthcare Partners hospitals in Ohio. The two unions are also battling for members in California.
Billionaire and Home Depot founder Kenneth G. Langone is giving a $100 million donation to New York University Medical Center. The amount matches a contribution he gave the facility in 1999. NYU representatives said that it will use the funds to start a campaign to raise $1 billion for a new hospital pavilion. In return for the donation, the university plans to rename the medical center the N.Y.U. Langone Medical Center, effective immediately.
