Michigan healthcare systems are erecting new hospitals and renovating old ones, pumping in at least $2.2 billion into their communities in 13 of the largest projects. The projects promise to make the hospitals into meccas of modern medicine, with the latest in technology, private patient rooms and sunny, landscaped, healing environments. The boom is also a bright spot in the Michigan construction industry slowed by the downturn in the housing market.
HealthPartners and SEIU Healthcare have reached agreement on a new labor contract. If ratified, the three-year deal would cover 1,500 non-physician employees who work in HealthPartners clinics in Minnesota and avoid a possible strike.
The long waits that government inspectors say endanger emergency room patients at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center can also be found in backlogged hospitals across the country, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians. The group surveyed 1,000 emergency care physicians and found that one in five knew of a patient who had died because of having to wait too long for care.
The board that would be charged with turning around the struggling Atlanta-based Grady Health System would include several of the civic and business leaders who recommended a management change, according to a memo the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce sent to Fulton County Commission Chairman John Eaves. On the list are some of metro Atlanta's most powerful leaders in business and health.
Legal experts say attempts to channel potentially unhappy patients away from the court system and into arbitration are becoming increasingly common in healthcare. Proponents say arbitration is faster, cheaper and fairer than trials, but critics say the system can be weighted against consumers and makes it harder to track complaints or build legal precedents.
Frustrated by rising benefit costs, executives at an Indianapolis healthcare system proposed a new program to get employees fired up about staying healthy. The proposal, however, generated so much resentment that the system never rolled out the program. The clash between Clarian Health Partners and its 13,000 employees is an example of the skirmishes that loom as employers experiment with tough get-healthy regimes.
Every year hundreds of terminally ill poor people on Medicaid die in sterile hospital rooms because Connecticut won't pay for their hospice care. But Gov. M. Jodi Rell's proposed state budget is calling for amending Connecticut's Medicaid plan to include hospice services for the terminally ill. Connecticut is one of three states without a hospice benefit in its Medicaid program, even though hospice care is more cost-effective than dying in a hospital.
Citing multiple lapses in patient care, the Connecticut health department has placed Hartford Hospital on probation. The department is demanding sweeping changes in the way the 800-bed teaching hospital delivers care. The hospital was cited for inadequate measures to prevent bedsores and infections; poor documentation of drug orders; and one case in which a sponge was left inside a kidney transplant patient.
Along with rising healthcare costs, workers need to plan for higher risks associated with financing their care in retirement, experts say. U.S. automakers have already offloaded their retiree healthcare liability by funding special trusts managed by the United Auto Workers union. Investment gains and workers' own cost containment will determine whether money will be there to meet retirees' needs. elephone and utility workers could be the next wave of these arrangements.
After the lab at Rockville Centre, NY-based Mercy Medical mixed up one patient's test with another woman's, the women had a double mastectomy and died due to complications from the surgery. In October 2007, the state Health Department concluded that the hospital had taken proper "corrective action" after the mix-up in the mastectomy case. But it is now investigating the hospital over the deaths of three other patients.
