University of Connecticut officials touted an ambitious proposal to partner the financially troubled University of Connecticut Health Center with Hartford Hospital, a plan that promises to end the Health Center's habit of seeking taxpayer bailouts. But the plan also would require the state to come up with $475 million for a new hospital and spend $13 million a year in labor costs. The partnership would create a "University Hospital," and transform the Health Center from one of the smallest academic hospitals in the country to part of a major regional health center.
Eighteen months after unveiling plans to build a $400 million replacement hospital in New Lenox, Silver Cross Hospital has gotten the green light to open a satellite center in nearby Frankfort, IL. The proposed urgent-care center will house an imaging facility, doctors' offices and a sleep-study center with three to six beds, officials said. The Frankfort center's approval comes several months after construction began on another Silver Cross satellite facility—a 30,000-square-foot medical professional building and health center in Homer Glen, IL.
Top Los Angeles County officials are conducting a case-by-case review of all health department employees known to have criminal histories in order to determine whether some workers have convictions that should disqualify them from their jobs. Supervisor Mike Antonovich disclosed his request four days after a report found that a convicted rapist had been hired as an X-ray technologist by County-USC Medical Center managers despite reporting his convictions on his job application.
Because there are no pediatric specialty hospitals in North Pinellas County, FL, parents have long had to drive to All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg for specialized pediatric care. Now Morton Plant Mease Health Care hopes to fill the gap by forming a partnership with St. Joseph's Children's Hospital of Tampa. Through the alliance, parents and children will have better access to the high-tech medical care offered at St. Joseph's, officials said.
The North Carolina health plan needs $1.2 billion over the next two years, and officials have said they will need a special appropriation of $300 million this fiscal year to keep the plan running. As lawmakers seek to shore up the plan, they face tough choices: Raise premiums, which are mostly covered by tax money; reduce health benefits; or both. The legislature could shift more insurance costs to employees or cut their medical benefits.
A new ePharmacy serving Kansas City-based St. Luke's Health System's growing Lee's Summit campus and several other area facilities is intended to boost patient safety and save money. The virtual pharmacy makes a pharmacist available at nights and on weekends to some of St. Luke's most remote locations. Two pharmacists staff the ePharmacy, which is at the Summit Technology Center in Lee's Summit. They serve St. Luke's East-Lee's Summit; St. Luke's Northland in Kansas City, North, and Smithville; Crittenton Children's Center in Kansas City; Hedrick Medical Center in Chillicothe; and Wright Memorial Hospital in Trenton, MO.
In spring 2007, three young cancer patients died within a month of one another after stays at Tampa, FL-based St. Joseph's Hospital.
But cancer didn't kill them, according to a lawsuit that alleges the children were exposed to a dangerous fungus released during a hospital construction project. Their immune systems already weakened by disease, the children succumbed to mold-related infections, the suit alleges.
The parent corporation of New Orleans Children's Hospital is acquiring Touro Infirmary, unveiling the deal by promising to spend $100 million on capital improvements during the next five years at the hospital which has struggled financially since Hurricane Katrina. Executives pitched the relationship as a way to solidify Touro's place in the New Orleans region's evolving healthcare system since Hurricane Katrina. It will allow the two hospitals, they said, to build on their history of collaboration and their similarities, including the natural bridge from Touro's prenatal care, labor, and delivery focus to Children's wide-ranging pediatric services.
Layoffs are spiking as the recession rips through the country, with retailers, banks, factories, and others cutting costs ever deeper. The latest round of pink slips and cost-cutting measures came on the heels of tens of thousands of layoffs ordered by a slew of companies last week alone.
The government is poised to extend health coverage to 4 million more lower-income children, a first step in President Barack Obama's promise to shrink the ranks of the uninsured. The House was expected to approve the expansion of a children's health insurance program and deliver it to Obama for his quick signature. The bill has already passed the Senate. Over the next four years, up to 13 million children could be covered under the program.
