As increasing numbers of the unemployed and uninsured turn to the nation’s emergency rooms as a medical last resort, doctors warn that the already overburdened centers could have even more trouble handling the heart attacks, broken bones, and other traumas that define their core mission. Even before the recession became evident, many emergency rooms around the country were already overcrowded with dangerously long waits for some patients, and needed to redirect ambulances to other hospitals.
Jefferson Parish's three largest hospitals are expected to lose a total of at least $50 million this year, due to post-Katrina problems that include skyrocketing labor costs, a surge in uninsured patients, and lagging Medicare reimbursements. The financial health of the three hospitals is so dire that the huge losses actually represent an improvement over 2005, when West Jefferson Medical Center, East Jefferson General Hospital, and Ochsner Medical Center lost a combined $150 million. Although the deficits have so far been covered by reserve funds, the hospitals can't afford to bleed cash much longer without cutting services, according to a new report by the Jefferson Parish Economic Development Commission.
As they cope with the rising burden of uncompensated care and investment losses, Michigan hospitals are postponing projects, laying people off, or freezing jobs. Even long-healthy systems, such as Royal Oak-based Beaumont Hospitals, are hurting. The system faces a $60-million shortfall and is postponing a big cancer radiation center, freezing jobs, and asking executives to take pay cuts. Equally strong Oakwood Healthcare System of Dearborn may post its first loss since 1999, said Doug Welday, its chief financial officer.
The number of hospital patients with bedsores has risen dramatically over a 14-year period, leading to longer, more expensive hospital stays, according to a new report by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Some 503,300 patients admitted to U.S. hospitals in 2006 suffered from a bedsore that developed either before or during their stay. That figure was 281,300 in 1993, representing an increase of 78.9%, the report found.
Women are less likely than men to receive appropriate and timely treatment after being hospitalized for a heart attack and more likely to die if it's severe, according to a study led by a Baylor College of Medicine cardiologist. The study found that women overall are nearly twice as likely to die of massive heart attacks as men. When researchers adjusted for the fact female patients tend to be older and sicker, they were 12% more likely to die.
A North Carolina administrative law judge has upheld a previous denial of new hospital in Clemmons. Officials with Winston-Salem-based Novant Health, who have proposed building a new hospital in Clemmons, said they plan to appeal to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, calling it "just one more step in the appeals process."
On any given day at the three-story Doctors Without Borders Jude Anne Maternity Hospital in Haiti, women give birth on the floor. Often, the delivery ward is so crowded that some women don't even make it onto the sheetless plastic cots. The latest Haitian healthcare crisis began in October when doctors and nurses at the country's largest medical center went on strike. Haiti was still reeling from four successive storms and just emerging from a nearly five-month-old political stalemate. Two other public hospitals that care for pregnant women in the capital also would temporarily close. Suddenly, the doctors and midwives at Jude Anne found their caseloads multiplying.
The Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut is about to launch an ambitious proposal for healthcare reform in Connecticut, envisioning a mammoth insurance pool and changes in the way medical care is delivered. The proposal by the foundation, an influential advocacy group for expanded health coverage, aims to lower healthcare costs and make insurance more affordable. It shares many concepts with current national proposals and past state attempts.
Britain's state-funded health service has published plans to ensure hospitals know where their surgical instruments are coming from, after acknowledging that some may be produced by child laborers in Pakistan. Many of the scalpels and forceps used in Britain, the U.S., and other Western countries are manufactured in the Pakistani city of Sialkot. Surgical instruments are among Pakistan's major exports, but labor activists say many are made in workshops by child laborers. The proposed National Health Service guidelines call on hospitals to introduce "ethical procurement" policies and to consider labor standards when they are buying goods.
The parent of Maywood, IL-based Loyola University Medical Center is eliminating more than 200 jobs as part of a "wide-ranging effort" to cut the hospital's annual expenses by 5%, or about $30 million.
Loyola University Health System said 208 largely "non-clinical" jobs such as middle managers will be cut in a move that will save nearly $6 million.
