Financially ailing Boca Raton (FL) Community Hospital has laid off 39 employees and eliminated an additional 28 vacant positions, the third round of cuts since July 2007. "A layoff was a last resort," hospital CEO Jerry Fedele said in a statement. "Our staffing levels must be reflective of our current patient census in order for us to remain competitive while providing outstanding care." The nonprofit hospital lost $120 million in fiscal 2008.
The Monroeville (PA) council has voted to approve a rezoning request, a consolidation plan, and three conditional use requests for the proposed University of Pittsburgh Medical Center East hospital site. The approvals came in spite of citizens who spoke vehemently against building the hospital and urged council to deny UPMC's requests. Tami Merryman, chief quality officer for UPMC's Center for Quality Improvement and Innovation, noted that UPMC serves 80 Monroeville residents on an average day, and the intent was to serve those patients better. She also said that the facility was not meant to operate as a full-service hospital and would not feature obstetrics, open heart surgery, and other advanced services.
Boca Raton (FL) Community Hospital's fundraising foundation is being drained this fiscal year to keep the hospital afloat. The hospital plans to tap more than $124 million from its foundation by July 2009, roughly 73% of its total assets to help the hospital pay its soaring debts.
Desert Springs Hospital and Medical Center of Las Vegas has agreed to pay a $228,000 administrative fine to the Nevada Health Division for violations. The violations centered around patient care and the quality of mammogram images. Health officials said 92 patients who had undergone mammograms at the hospital were notified and have received additional screenings.
A nationwide survey this year suggested that as many as half of U.S. doctors prescribe a a placebo at least once a month. Doctors have known about the placebo effect, a product of the interaction between mind and body, for decades. But is it ethical for doctors to deceive patients by not telling them? The survey has helped fuel debate about whether their potential to make patients feel better outweighs doctors' responsibility to be truthful.
Most American adults who are looking for a primary care physician, specialist, or hospital do not go online to consider price or quality information, according to the Center for Studying Health System Change. Half of all consumers rely on word-of-mouth recommendations when selecting primary care physicians, while most listen to physicians when choosing specialists and facilities for medical procedures.
Health insurance companies that serve Medicare patients are realizing significantly higher profits than they anticipated, resulting in the companies getting $1.3 billion more than projected, congressional auditors say. The insurance companies' payments are based, in part, on their anticipated revenues and expenses. If the companies had been more accurate, they could have spent much of that $1.3 billion on enhanced health benefits or lower monthly premiums, and they still would have maintained their expected profit margin, the Government Accountability Office said in a report. Rep. Pete Stark, chairman of the House Ways and Means health subcommittee, said he will push for legislation next year that would lower the government's payments to insurers.
Federal regulators are about to approve use of a critical new electrical component for implantable heart devices without adequately testing for its potential risks, says Robert G. Hauser, MD, of the Minneapolis Heart Institute in an article published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Hauser argues that manufacturers should perform at least some clinical trials on patients to ensure that the new technology is not prone to short-circuiting. Underlying Hauser's argument is a question that heart device producers, regulators, and lawmakers have been grappling with in recent years: When medical devices the FDA has already approved undergo technical changes, how much and what kind of additional testing should occur before they are allowed to be sold?
More than one-third of adults and nearly 12% of children in the United States use alternatives to traditional medicine, according to a large federal survey. The 2007 survey of more than 32,000 Americans, found that use of yoga, "probiotics," fish oil and other "complementary and alternative" therapies held steady among adults since the last national survey five years earlier, and that such treatments have become part of healthcare for many youngsters.
Critics say the findings were disturbing because most alternative treatments have not been scientifically validated and those that have been rigorously tested have overwhelmingly been found to be ineffective.
Washington, DC, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty awarded almost $51 million in medical grants to three healthcare entities as part of an effort to improve primary and emergency care for children and some of the city's poorest residents. Washington Hospital Center received $10 million to increase the capacity of its emergency room, and United Medical Center received $11 million to build a pediatric emergency department. The DC Primary Care Association was given $29.7 million to support four primary care facilities currently in development.
