Medicaid patients living in Tampa or Gainesville, FL, could soon be part of a pilot project that would overhaul how they get healthcare.
State lawmakers are considering yet another change to the way the nearly $16 billion state-federal healthcare program for the poor works. Four years ago, legislators agreed to a controversial Medicaid reform pilot program for Broward and Duval counties that forced patients to get their care through a managed care organization. Now a House panel has approved a measure that would steer patients in Alachua and Hillsborough counties into a new network that links medical schools with primary care clinics.
About 500,000 working-age Californians have lost health insurance since the start of the recession, and an additional 600,000 could lose theirs by 2012 even if the economy fully recovers, according to a UC Berkeley report. The report estimated that between November 2007 and February of this year, about 3.7 million more American adults became uninsured.
Most American teens don't receive the appropriate amount of preventive health services, a new study finds. The University of California, San Francisco, researchers analyzed data gathered from almost 8,500 adolescents, ages 10 to 17, who took part in the Medical Expenditure Survey. The UCSF team focused on several aspects of preventive care for adolescents, including the extent to which they'd received care in the past year, whether they received counseling about various health issues, and whether they had any time alone with their healthcare provider.
Nine people accounted for nearly 2,700 of the emergency room visits in Central Texas during the past six years at a cost of $3 million to taxpayers and others, according to a report. The patients went to emergency rooms 2,678 times between 2003 and 2008, said the report from the nonprofit Integrated Care Collaboration, a group of hospitals and other healthcare providers that treat low-income and uninsured patients in Central Texas.
The Hospital of Central Connecticut is in discussions with Hartford Health Care Corporation, the parent company of Hartford Hospital, about an affiliation. The talks involve potentially affiliating the hospital's parent company, Central Connecticut Health Alliance, with Hartford Health Care. The Hospital of Central Connecticut would still maintain is own medical staff, bylaws, board of directors, and license, and would have representatives on the Hartford Health Care board.
To accept $1.3 billion in federal Medicaid stimulus money, Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell will have to scrap $22.1 million worth of proposed Medicaid cuts, including a plan to charge premiums to more Medicaid recipients. But advocates for Medicaid recipients say the governor needs to do more to avoid violating the intent, if not the strict terms, of the stimulus. Other proposed Medicaid cuts, which Rell is not expected to withdraw, target safety net programs at a time when more residents need them, something the stimulus program was intended to avoid, the critics say.
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has raised several concerns about the proposal to merge the UConn Health Center and Hartford Hospital. In a letter sent to the co-chairwomen of the legislature's higher education committee, Blumenthal wrote that the proposal would require the state to give up some of its authority, agree to an open-ended financial commitment, and give UConn authority to enter into contracts even if they violate the law.
The proposal also seeks to waive most required permitting processes and "constrains any meaningful review of critical licensing" for the new hospital that would be built, Blumenthal wrote.
More than 70 preachers and other clergy are leading an effort to find federal aid to save ailing Metro Nashville General Hospital at Meharry if local and state funding is cut. Nashville Mayor Karl Dean has written a letter to the hospital authority, which runs Metro General, saying a better way of funding the facility needs to be found. Dean said the city's financial considerations in the current economic climate will leave it unable to help the hospital make up a projected budget shortfall when the fiscal year ends on June 30.
Hundreds of medical records kept by a longtime Acton, MA, family doctor who abruptly closed his practice in 2008 are about to be destroyed, leaving patients without crucial information and exposing a gap in state law about who owns abandoned medical records. On April 8, a storage company is scheduled to discard the records and auction the equipment left by Ronald T. Moody, who was evicted from his office last September as state regulators pursued him for practicing without a license. Many of Moody's former patients have no idea that their records are slated for destruction. None has been notified, nor does the law require such notice.
At least 64 people have been infected with hepatitis C after receiving transfusions of tainted blood at a county hospital in southern China. The authorities at the Guizhou Province hospital traced the infections to contaminated blood from a single donor who had sold blood to the facility from 1998 to 2002. The police have detained the hospital's former chief on suspicion of illegally collecting and using the blood. Hospital officials also blamed improper screening of the blood supply for the spread of the infection.
