Cook Children's Health Care System is negotiating with Scott & White Healthcare to manage a new regional children's hospital in Waco, TX. The combined resources would take the Cook Children's network into Central Texas and give the longtime Fort Worth institution access to teaching resources through Scott & White's partnership with the Texas A&M University Health Science Center College of Medicine. The hospital systems are also negotiating a broader agreement to share coordination and delivery of pediatric care, officials said.
For a second time since the government's wide-ranging Rhode Island State House corruption probe began, a federal judge sentenced former Roger Williams Medical Center President Robert A. Urciuoli to three years in prison for buying the legislative influence of a former state senator. In sentencing the former hospital executive, Chief U.S. District Judge Mary M. Lisi acknowledged that the public official at the center of the case, former state Sen. John A. Celona, was "somewhat of a shakedown artist."
What would happen if patients could visit a doctor at the touch of a button, no waiting, without leaving their home or workplace? Starting this fall, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota hopes to find out.
Through a partnership with Florida International University and the city of Miami Gardens, families in need of healthcare will get personalized attention from students of the school's new College of Medicine. The school will pair the 40 students in the school's inaugural class with an individual family. After their first year, and for the remaining three years of the four-year program, the students will look after all of their assigned family's healthcare needs.
The Texas Attorney General's office announced it ended a probe into a Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas' physician rating program and reached an agreement with the insurer to stop ranking physicians using claims data. Attorney General Gregg Abbott also resolved an investigation into Blue Cross' handling of out-of-network referrals. According to state investigators, Blue Cross had threatened to terminate physicians solely on the basis of referring patients to qualified specialists that were outside the Blue Cross provider network.
Officials at WellStar Kennestone Hospital in Marietta, GA, say they are not responsible for the sexual assaults allegedly committed by three former employees. In February, seven women filed a lawsuit against the hospital and three men, who they say assaulted them during their hospital stays. WellStar has filed a motion with the State Court of Cobb County to have some of the claims in the lawsuit dismissed. The motion states that if the assaults occurred, the actions "were beyond the scope of their employment and contrary to the interests of the hospital."
Many U.S. hospitals are hurting this year from falling numbers of elective surgeries and a rising tide of uninsured patients. The economic downturn has also savaged investment income, which can buffer finances in lean years. Experts say the burden is falling hardest on smaller rural and urban hospitals such as the 189-bed Northeastern Hospital in Philadelphia. Northeastern has been hurt by falling patient admissions and rising charity care. The latter has surged 33% over the last four years, reaching a projected $19.2 million in charges in 2009.
Three Chicago-area hospitals where hundreds may have been exposed to tuberculosis from a doctor-in-training were working to contact patients and narrow down how many people were at risk. The 26-year-old female Northwestern University pediatric resident was diagnosed last week with TB. She most recently had worked at Children's Memorial Hospital, from Nov. 20 to April 3, where she was in contact with at least 150 children and more than 300 workers. So far no one has tested positive for TB, though only a small number of patients apparently have been tested, hospital officials said.
Accident victims may no longer be able to count on such quick transport to a faraway trauma center via medical helicopter if budget cuts proposed by Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell are approved. Governor Rell has suggested slashing $1.4 million to Life Star, or roughly 20% of its budget, which would mean grounding one of its two helicopters. The service is operated by Hartford Hospital, but will fly to any hospital in the state, and to hospitals in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and upstate New York.
The Obama administration is promising to spend billions to make healthcare more efficient, but Jennifer Brull, a family doctor in rural Kansas, is already a step or two ahead. A year ago, she switched her 3,000 patients from paper charts to electronic health records. Now, working with computers and printouts, her staff of part-time nurses and shared front-office workers has more time to help her meet the needs of patients.
