Victims treated by paramedics obtain life-saving treatment faster than hospital walk-ins, according to data from a professor at UCLA. Ambulances equipped with devices that allow paramedics to more quickly diagnose serious heart attacks has sharply reduced the time it takes for patients to receive life-saving treatment, officials said. When patients walk into emergency rooms on their own, long waits can delay diagnosis and treatment, according to health officials.
If nurses at a Tenet Healthcare Corp. hospital in Houston vote yes to a nursing union, the move would probably send reverberations across North Texas hospitals. The California Nurses Association collected enough signature cards at Tenet's hospital in the Cypress-Fairbanks suburb of Houston to force the union election. Twenty-two percent of Tenet's employees already are unionized, according to the hospital system's 2007 annual report.
The Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut has launched an online television campaign to satirize what the foundation calls the nation's broken healthcare system. The ad campaign is the latest in a series from the foundation that mixes humor with a serious call for comprehensive healthcare reform.
The Tennessee Health Services and Development Agency has filed an order approving a certificate of need for a 56-bed private hospital in Spring Hill. The approval overturned the decision of an administrative law judge, who ruled in favor of the appeal filed by Maury Regional Hospital and Williamson Medical Center. The agency ruled that neither public hospital could prove that the financial impact of the Spring Hill hospital would curtail their ability to provide services in their respective regions.
Atrius Health, a Massachusetts-based alliance of five non-profit community-based physician groups, has gotten rid of or rearranged many of its top managers and eliminated several key positions after the resignation of its chief executive. The housecleaning reflects continued difficulties between Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Atrius' largest physicians group, and the four smaller groups that were lumped together under the Atrius banner.
A budget proposed in Montgomery County, MD, might force the county to slow its ambitious effort to offer medical care to adults who lack health insurance. Under the proposed budget, the county's program for adults who lack health insurance would be cut by $700,000. The reductions would not mean a decrease in services for current patients but would make it difficult to significantly increase the number of people treated, said the director of the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services.
The state's new health secretary took exception to the size and projected cost of the new teaching hospital Louisiana State University hopes to build downtown, perhaps signaling that Gov. Bobby Jindal will decide in the next few months to redraw the ambitious plans developed under the previous administration. LSU has tried since the storm to persuade the public of the hospital's importance, arguing that it would revive charity care in the city and serve as a powerful recruitment tool for medical students, residents and physicians. Hospital executives from the private sector have called its $1.2 billion price tag excessive, however, and they appear to have found a sympathetic ear in Jindal.
At the state Senate's Local and Municipal Affairs Committee meeting at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, the main topic of discussion was the future of Charity Hospital. The question posed was this: Is there any analysis to substantiate the claim that it would be more cost-efficient to build a new public hospital rather than to renovate and reuse the Avery C. Alexander Charity Hospital, the art deco building where indigent patients and others sought healthcare for generations?
A CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield dental HMO accidentally exposed personal information, including Social Security numbers, of about 75,000 members on a public Web site last month and didn't notify them until about three weeks later. The Dental Network, which is owned by CareFirst, informed the members--mostly Maryland and District of Columbia residents--that their names, addresses, dates of birth and Social Security numbers had been posted on its Web site for two weeks in February because of a technical error. The company says that to its knowledge, no one has misused the information.
A government laptop computer containing sensitive medical information on 2,500 patients enrolled in a National Institutes of Health study was stolen in February, potentially exposing seven years' worth of clinical trial data, including names, medical diagnoses and details of the patients' heart scans. The information was not encrypted, in violation of the government's data-security policy.
