Cooper University Hospital serves those in need of trauma care from seven New Jersey counties. If you are critically injured anywhere from Cape May to Trenton, you'll be sent there. The trauma unit handled 2,846 cases in 2007, more than the units at Temple University Hospital, Hahnemann University Hospital, or the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, according to data provided by those hospitals.
New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo has started sending subpoenas and document requests this month to colleges including Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown and several State University of New York campuses as part of an investigation of relationships between the colleges and health insurance companies that cover students. The investigation appears to be focused on the adequacy of disclosure of policy terms and costs to students. Investigators also appear to be looking into whether colleges are receiving any improper payments in exchange for requiring students to use a particular insurer.
Many small employers are facing markedly higher health premiums in 2009. Employers and health insurance brokers in the South, Midwest, and California report steeper increases in their annual renewal notices from health insurers. Some premium increases being quoted to employers are double those quoted just a few months ago.
The Oregon Legislature is reviewing a plan to regulate hospital prices and insurance company administrative costs, and raise cigarette and alcohol taxes to pay for public education and mental health services. The proposal would also create an Oregon Health Authority to overhaul the state's healthcare industry. Proponents say the proposal would cover all of the state's uninsured children and about 100,000 uninsured adults.
Homeless people across Nashville will have access to primary healthcare thanks to a nearly $1.2 million federal grant and the plans of one Nashville nonprofit to expand care. United Neighborhood Health Services will use the money to provide medical, dental, and behavioral healthcare to the city's homeless in a network of walk-in clinics across the city. Advocates say the new plan should help cut down on the number of emergency room visits by the homeless and save taxpayers money. A recent study by the Nashville nonprofit Park Center showed that Nashville's homeless visited hospitals three times more often than homeless in other cities.
Heathcare stocks often are seen as a haven when the economy slows, but they've struggled lately. But they still have managed to outperform the broader market: No matter what the state of the economy, the demand for many healthcare products and services continues unabated.
Many people don't skip prescribed doses on purpose, they simply forget. But Vitality Inc. says its new GlowCap device will help them remember, and eventually lower healthcare costs. The GlowCap fits standard-size pill containers, and is embedded with a small light that begins flashing at a preset time when the patient is supposed to take a medication.
Wall Street Journal columnist Benjamin Brewer, MD, outlines his proposal that he says will help improve people's health and the U.S. system of care: by having the government give each person $365 of their tax money back to be spent on primary healthcare. That amount could be paid directly to each person's primary care doctor for a year's worth of services, he says, adding that it could allow everyone to contract privately for medical care for themselves with a primary care doctor without government or insurance company red tape.
Eight healthcare providers on Long Island were among 20 in New York that overbilled the state millions of dollars in this decade, the state comptroller's office has said. A 2007 audit conducted by the comptroller's office found that the providers submitted $10 million in inflated claims, mostly by waiving patients' out-of-network fees for the Empire Plan, the state's largest employee health plan. Four of them have paid nearly $7 million in restitution plus civil fines.
The legal battle over whether to keep a 12-year-old New York boy on life support at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, ended after the boy's heart stopped beating, an attorney for the boy's family said. Doctors had declared the boy legally dead Nov. 4 after his brain activity had ceased. But his parents, who are Orthodox Jews, said their faith does not define death on that basis and had sought an order from D.C. Superior Court to keep him on life-sustaining equipment. The hospital received nearly 200 e-mails and phone calls on the case urging the hospital not to give up on the boy.
