Christopher Gessner, president of Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, is mystified and upset by state budgeting practices. He can't understand why his hospital is set to lose all $445,000 of its state funding in Gov. Ed Rendell's new budget, while a similar medical facility, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, is only losing $44,000. "We'll be taking a direct hit," he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "I'm puzzled. This is frustrating. All we want is parity with Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. We don't have it right now."
Both the House and Senate versions of the economic stimulus package include $20 billion for electronic medical records, a sum expected to spur the conversion to save costs, improve the quality of care and add information technology jobs, especially in the San Franciso area. While a relatively small part of President Obama's roughly $900 billion plan to jump-start the economy, the funds amount to the largest infusion of cash the health IT industry has ever seen.
Ever since Hurricane Katrina, Charity Hospital has been an emblem of misery for New Orleans. Nearly 3½ years after the flood ended, Charity is still empty. Plans to replace the hospital with a new one are stalled. Instead, Charity has become perhaps the most notable symbol of the languid pace of government efforts to rebuild or replace billions of dollars worth of public works wrecked when Katrina and Hurricane Rita hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. Among thousands of projects that still haven't moved forward, none has been as big or contentious as Charity.
Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center shut down its rooftop helicopter pad, months after exhaust fumes began leaking into the new hospital's ventilation system. The move came one month after state officials began investigating complaints. County-USC's ventilation system problems were apparent soon after the hospital opened in November, said Pete Delgado, the hospital's chief executive.
Atlanta-based Grady Memorial Hospital itself is the most likely source of the Legionnaires' disease that has sickened four patients since Jan. 1, but results from water tests inside the hospital will not be ready until February 9. All four patients are responding well to antibiotics, hospital spokeswoman Denise Simpson said.
Susan Lance, MD, a Georgia epidemiologist, said the patients diagnosed with Legionnaires' disease appear to have no ties other than their treatment at Grady. State and federal public health officials are helping Grady Memorial Hospital track down the source of the bacteria.
National healthcare advocacy group Families USA supported the more generous health insurance aid envisioned in the House version of President Barack Obama's stimulus bill to help more unemployed people pay for often-expensive COBRA coverage or find cheaper alternatives. The group has released a study saying many of the newly unemployed in virtually every state are priced out of the health insurance market.
Officials are relieved their communities will not suffer a major loss of services from recent cutbacks announced by a regional Cambridge (MA) Health Alliance. The health alliance announced that as a result of the financial crunch created by state budget cuts and the slow economy, it plans to eliminate more than 300 jobs, end inpatient services at Somerville Hospital, and close six medical clinics. But word that the cuts spared the alliance's Whidden Memorial Hospital in Everett, the Revere Family Health Center, and the Malden Family Medical Center came as welcome news to officials in those cities.
Sen. Chuck Grassley has been eyeing nonprofit hospitals for years, and now he wants to fold some of his ideas for scrutiny in the big stimulus bill grinding its way through Congress. One Grassley-sponsored amendment would require the Treasury department to compare the amount of uncompensated care and executive compensation provided at nonprofit versus for-profit hospitals. A second amendment calls for government officials to create "uniform definitions of charity care and uncompensated care."
In the aftermath of a close vote by Loudoun County, VA, supervisors to reject a proposed 164-bed hospital in Broadlands, Loudoun officials have started debating whether the vote effectively killed the county's chances of getting a second hospital in the foreseeable future. Board Chairman Scott K. York, who supported the Broadlands project proposed by HCA Virginia, predicted Loudoun would never see another hospital built. But Supervisor Kelly Burk said HCA and Inova Health System own property along Route 50, an area in which Inova has expressed interest in developing a hospital. Other hospital networks also might want to build in Loudoun, she said.
An American doctor charged with manslaughter in the deaths of three patients at a rural Australian hospital repeatedly botched operations and performed surgeries he was not capable of handling.
In his opening statement in the pretrial hearing of Jayant Patel, prosecutor Ross Martin also said the doctor lied on his application to Bundaberg Base Hospital by neglecting to reveal he had been reprimanded by medical boards in the United States.
