Physicians and other healthcare providers are facing language and other barriers arising from fast growth in Nashville's immigrant population. As a result, they're hiring interpreters and staff who speak languages from Arabic to Somali, signing up for services that offer telephone-based translators or send in-person interpreters, or adding satellite clinics in diverse areas of Nashville.
Two Boston-based institutions—Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital—are collaborating with South Weymouth-based South Shore Hospital to provide comprehensive cancer care for South Shore residents who won't have to travel to Boston. Each hospital is funding a third of the cost of the center, which will be known as the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center in clinical affiliation with South Shore Hospital.
Low earnings, rising overhead, and overwhelming patient loads are sending veteran physicians into early retirement and driving medical students into better-paying specialties. The loss of a single physician thrusts hundreds of patients into medical limbo, but the effect is far broader. Already, shortages make it difficult to see physicians in swaths of northern and rural California, as well as neighborhoods in South Central Los Angeles and other urban cores.
Federal investigators found no evidence that UCLA Medical Center or its staff acted improperly when it performed liver transplants on four Japanese patients with suspected links to organized crime in their country, according to an official with CMS. But Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the senior Republican member of the Senate Finance Committee, is seeking to determine whether policies governing transplant recipients are flawed.
By choosing former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to head his healthcare reform effort, President-elect Barack Obama has picked up a hardheaded political strategy for his push to overhaul the nation's healthcare system. Guided by lessons from President Clinton's healthcare debacle 15 years ago, Daschle has put a premium on cooperation between the White House, Congress, and major healthcare interest groups. Daschle favors moving decisively to seize political momentum and, if necessary, cut off opposition, something he said Clinton failed to do in 1993.
Indian hospital groups are betting the U.S. economic crisis will transform the medical tourism industry from one tailored to individual patients, to one that targets corporate America's soaring healthcare costs. In 2009, Apollo Hospitals, India's biggest healthcare company, will for the first time treat employees of a non-Indian company, Wisconsin-based Serigraph Inc., for certain elective procedures. It's a trial program, but there a definite economic benefits: A cardiac bypass can cost about $100,000 in a U.S. private hospital. Apollo says it can do the procedure for a tenth of the cost.
President-elect Barack Obama has said earlier he'll make digitizing patient records a key tenet of an ambitious economic recovery and infrastructure-building plan. After numerous stalled attempts, athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush says this time it could happen. But not if the money goes toward packaged software-based approaches, he says. Bush is an entrepreneur in online billing services for doctors.
The Dubai Health Authority has selected U.S. managed care giant Aetna to provide health management programs and services for outpatient care practices beginning January 1, 2009. Aetna will be one of two companies providing the services that are part of the government of Dubai's plans to mandate primary care next year.
Currently, Dubai offers select health programs to its 1.5 million residents, more than a million of which are expatriates working in the region. The new system will require residents to register for basic health services.
Martha Temple, president of Aetna Global Benefits says that Aetna will be compensated directly from the government, and Aetna will then reimburse the outpatient providers. She described this program as a significant opportunity for Aetna to expand its footprint in the region, as other emirates and countries in the Middle East are eyeing carefully Dubai's progress toward mandated healthcare.
Aetna, in partnership with Gateway Healthcare, will provide administrative services, negotiate arrangements with hospitals and clinics, and develop disease management programs. The government of Dubai estimates that about 300 to 500 independent outpatient clinics will join the system in 2009.
Considering that the Dubai Health Authority might someday expand this new mandated program into a more comprehensive universal healthcare program, Aetna's appointment is significant in its strategic role in the region. In a prepared statement the Dubai Health Authority says that Aetna and GlobeMed Gulf will work closely together to develop a future strategy for each outpatient clinic to develop pricing lists, patient registration processes, establishing data flows with the health authority, the transfer of funds, and costs as well as standard administrative support.
"Whilst we are now finalizing the details with the two successful organizations, this is an evolving program and we fully anticipate further opportunities for the industry moving forward as we continue to build partnerships across the healthcare sector," Laila Al Jassmi, director of the Dubai Health Authority's Health Funding Programme, said in a prepared statement.
Louisiana's efforts to finance a $1.2 billion teaching hospital in downtown New Orleans could be hamstrung by a constitutional cap on debt, which could force the project to be scaled back or reconfigured. Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration has long counted on borrowing about $400 million as part of the financing mix for the proposed 424-bed hospital. But bond underwriters in New York recently told a group of legislators that the borrowing would likely count against the state's debt limit, which would make it difficult to get approval from the State Bond Commission.
Calling an overhaul of the healthcare system a basic element of his administration's economic recovery programs, President-elect Barack Obama has presented former Senator Tom Daschle as his choice to become secretary of health and human services and to lead efforts to secure "affordable, accessible healthcare for every single American." At a news conference in Chicago, Obama said that Daschle would also be director of a new White House Office of Health Reform where Daschle will be the "lead architect" of proposals to expand coverage and rein in health costs.
