Private rooms in hospitals are a trend, but in the Detroit area, there's much more than that going on, such as: concierge medicine, smart rooms, free parking, wellness centers, and natural remedies.
General Motors says its new contract with the United Auto Workers will help cut its annual U.S. labor costs by $5 billion between now and 2011. The four-year pact shifts the obligation for about $46.7 billion in retired UAW worker healthcare from the company to the union, with the company pouring about $26.5 billion into a trust fund run by the union. Senior executives of GM touted the benefits of the labor contract and other cost reductions the company has implemented since a disastrous 2005 in which it lost more than $10 billion. Ford Motor Co., which posted a $12.6 billion loss for 2006, reached a similar contract agreement with the UAW following the GM contract resolution.
Florida regulators have prevented more than $100 million in fraudulent Medicaid overpayments in the past three years, according to a report released by the offices of the state attorney general and the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. The report also noted that there has been particular focus on Medicaid fraud related to durable medical equipment, with most of the cases occurring in South Florida.
As author of The Corporate Blogging Book and publisher of her own blog, BlogWriteForCEOs, Debbie Weil's spent a lot of time reading and studying CEO blogs. In this interview, Weil discusses corporate blogs and how healthcare leaders can make theirs more effective.
As part of a new policy that experts say is one of the toughest in the nation blocking pharmaceutical companies from influencing doctors, Duluth, MN-based SMDC Health System has banned nearly every freebie with a drug company name on it. Abolishing all logos from their facilities marks the latest and most drastic in a series of steps many of Minnesota's top healthcare institutions have taken in recent years to limit the doctor-drug rep relationship.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire is proposing a $3 million program for hospitals, community colleges to train current healthcare workers for nursing jobs. Gregoire says that with the state nursing shortage, nurse assistants, surgical technicians and other workers could be trained on the job and become registered nurses.
A recent report from Moody's Investors Services shows that even before its November 2007 purchase of Cedars Medical Center, 37 percent of revenue for the University of Miami came from patient care. Administrators expect the addition of the 560-bed hospital will mean patient care will soon contribute more than 50 percent of revenue to the school's coffers.
Two highly unusual measures in Alameda County, CA, are both geared toward building a new $750 million Children's Hospital. The hospital would hold 250 beds, 80 more than the current structure holds. The ballot initiatives, which ask voters to approve a parcel tax to help pay for the hospital expansion, have generated a sizable outcry. Detractors say the measures set a private medical institution ahead of others in the county, particularly county-operated hospitals, which will need to fund their own seismic upgrades down the road.
Civil rights attorneys have sued Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in connection with the alleged dumping of a paraplegic man on skid row. The suit was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of the man, and seeks unspecified punitive and compensatory damages against the hospital for alleged elder abuse, negligence and infliction of emotional distress.
Statistics show that 24 percent of Texans don't have health insurance--the highest percentage of any state in the nation. Charities have responded by opening more than 40 medical clinics in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, thanks to volunteer doctors and other health-care professionals, according to the Dallas County Medical Society.
