As walk-in clinics at retail stores offer convenient alternatives to doctors' offices and hospital emergency rooms, some hospitals are fighting back with walk-in clinics at some of those same retailers. Many primary-care doctors still denigrate the retail clinics as cheap, unworthy competitors, but hospitals see the clinics as a way to reach more patients and expand their business. And they argue that as President Obama and Congress warn of a shortage of primary-care physicians, the hospital-linked retail clinics are filling a vital public need.
Attorneys for shareholders asked a judge to make HealthSouth Corp. founder Richard Scrushy pay $2.6 billion for his alleged role in the huge fraud that nearly ruined the rehabilitation company. A civil lawsuit, filed by stockholders on behalf of the company, seeks to make Scrushy repay HealthSouth for salary, bonuses, and stock deals during the years of the fraud, plus other items like hundreds of personal plane flights for him and his family, and breast implants for a female singer he was promoting.
Analysts predict a report will show that the Social Security and Medicare trust funds will run out of money sooner than projected a year ago. The worst recession in decades and resulting high unemployment will lead to a bleaker forecast for both Social Security and Medicare in this year's trustees' report, analysts say.
Sunrise, FL-baed Mednax (MD), a physician services company, announced it has acquired Houston Neonatal-Perinatal Physicians. Mednax paid cash for the Houston practice, which is expected to contribute to earnings immediately. No additional terms were disclosed.
Ford has announced plans to sell 300 million new shares, and the company said proceeds from the offering would be used to fund a portion of the payments it owes to the United Auto Workers' retiree healthcare trust. In February, Ford negotiated a deal with the UAW that let it pay in stock as much as half the $13.6 billion it owes the retiree healthcare fund.
Baxter International Inc. said medical care providers at a hospital in Delaware and U.S. health officials are investigating whether the deaths of two patients are linked to a brand of heparin blood thinner Baxter sells in intravenous bags. Use of Baxter's heparin, a diluted form in pre-mixed bags used for a variety of blood thinning purposes, has been suspended by officials at Beebe Medical Center in Lewes, DE, since Friday. Adverse reactions were reported in five patients who had problems that included internal bleeding in the brain.
Doctors who follow evidence-based guidelines shouldn't be sued for skipping tests, argues AMA President-elect Jim Rohack. Rohack cited the decades of Dartmouth research that has shown there are wide variations in care in different parts of the country. The research suggests that where there are more specialists, and more fancy equipment, patients get more tests and procedures. Rohack said that following evidence-based guidelines could be a way to reduce those variations, but some docs may worry that they could be sued for skipping a test. Giving some liability protection to doctors who follow the guidelines might change that, Rohack argued in an interview with the Wall Street Journal Health Blog.
Early in 2008, Wal-Mart spoke of having 400 walk-in clinics by 2010. But later in 2008, that plan went into reverse: Of the 78 clinics Wal-Mart had in operation at the beginning of 2008, all but 17 were closed. Now it is rebuilding that business, this time largely in partnership with hospitals.
The White House has proposed an additional $59 billion in changes to the tax code that would help pay for the cost of efforts to cover the more than 40 million Americans without health insurance, including a substantial tightening of estate and gift tax rules. Budget documents reiterate President Barack Obama's plans to create a $630 billion "health reform reserve fund" to help pay for the healthcare efforts, which are expected to cost at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years.
Forty-five House Democrats in the party's moderate-to-conservative wing have protested the secretive process by which party leaders in their chamber are developing legislation to remake the healthcare system. Centrist Democrats said they fully endorsed President Obama's goal of guaranteeing access to health insurance and healthcare for all, but they are concerned about the cost of the legislation. And they want to be sure that the role of any new government-sponsored insurance program, expected to be a centerpiece of the bill, is carefully delineated.
