Columbia, S.C.-based BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina has added a twist to its customer service by opening a strip-mall store to sell policies and answer questions. The insurer will peddle individual, group, and children's health insurance and offer wellness seminars at its SC BlueStore, which opened recently in Mount Pleasant.
Gov. Jim Doyle's proposal to tax hospital revenue in Wisconsin would attract nearly a billion dollars in federal matching funds in its first three years, including nearly $300 million for hospitals in the Milwaukee area alone, according to state projections.
Every healthcare system with hospitals in Milwaukee County would come out ahead, the projections show.
A growing roster of doctors, nurses, and administrators from children's hospitals in Kansas City and southern China have been making transcontinental trips to experience life and healthcare half a world away. The exchange program started in 2003, after a Guangzhou hospital official approached a researcher at Children's Mercy Hospital with the idea to trade staff. Since then, 16 staff members from Children's Mercy and 13 from Guangzhou have made the trip. The two hospitals initially were interested in the exchange to promote research collaboration, but it evolved into a very broad exchange with clinical care, research and management, said Children's Mercy officials.
Patients are getting hammered by huge unexpected charges on medical bills, particularly in the tricky area of what's in and out of network. Finding out the real prices is often difficult for consumers—and made even harder because federal law prohibits any discussion in emergency room situations that would discourage patients from seeking treatment, a provision that providers sometimes use to explain why they don't talk about network or price issues.
The House Health Care & Wellness Committee has passed through legislation that will enable state regulators to conduct surprise inspections of Washington hospitals. The pending bill, which is now before the Rules Committee, repeals previous legislation that required state Department of Health officials to provide a four-week notice before surveying hospitals for health and safety violations.
For more hospitals, finding general surgeons to treat emergency room patients has become a bigger challenge as experienced doctors opt out of late-night call rotations or more physicians choose specialty practices. The trend has sparked the use of more temporary surgeons by hospitals. Hospital administrators say hiring doctors for these short-term assignments helps compensate for the fact that comparatively fewer general surgeons are coming out of medical school and residencies.
NorthShore Skokie (IL) Hospital said it would eliminate 150 full-time jobs, or nearly 14% of its workforce in the next two months.
The move eliminates seven senior executives, secretaries, clerical support, and business office staff. The layoff is beyond some earlier moves to outsource some functions that had already been announced and comes after its purchase by a larger hospital operator.
Congress is poised to pass legislation would renew and expand the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program to cover four million more children over a period of more than four years. The program, which now covers 6.7 million children, is set to expire March 31. The legislation passed the House by a 289-139 vote on Jan. 14, and the Senate Finance Committee by a 12-7 vote the next day. The Senate is considering it and will likely vote soon.
Proposed spending in the U.S. Senate's stimulus package includes $3 billion more for health information technology than that proposed by the U.S. House, according to a summary released by the Senate Appropriations Committee. The summary includes $5 billion for health information technology, which comes on top of roughly $18 billion in the Senate Finance Committee's portion of the bill for health technology. The House stimulus package includes only $20 billion for health information technology.
There has been an ethical makeover under way within the medical device industry, a field that has been troubled by federal investigations and bad publicity over the volatile issue of frequently undisclosed financial ties between companies and physicians. And while there is little question that battles over how much companies, doctors and medical institutions disclose about their financial ties will continue, some experts on medical conflicts of interest see the rapid fall of resistance by most major companies indicates that a turning point has arrived.
