More than one-third of all Americans will soon receive better insurance coverage for mental health treatments because of a new law that requires equal coverage of mental and physical illnesses. The requirement is included in the economic bailout bill that President Bush signed last week. Advocates described the new law as a milestone in the quest for civil rights, an effort to end insurance discrimination and to reduce the stigma of mental illness.
Healthcare is one of the largest industries in the country, and is projected to grow as the ranks of aging baby boomers swell. Now aspiring doctors and medical technicians can often get lessons in anatomy, disease, or radiology before college. There are an increasing number of rigorous classes for high school students seeking an early glimpse into the growing healthcare field, and a head start on the training they'll need.
In India, 44 bomb blasts in six cities have killed more than 150 people since May. But medical experts say the toll would be lower if ambulance services and public hospitals had the resources to treat more people during the "golden hour," the crucial period after a trauma in which a life can be saved.
A judge has ordered San Fernando Valley-based Providence Holy Cross Medical Center to halt construction on its $180-million expansion until the Los Angeles City Council reconsiders the project and decides whether more environmental review is needed. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Thomas I. McKnew Jr. said the hospital must stop work until the council either approves the project with an eight-vote majority or orders an environmental impact report on the project. Attorney Ted Franklin, who represents groups challenging the hospital expansion, urged the council to demand the extra environmental review, a process that typically takes at least a year.
Massachusetts officials have announced new healthcare regulations designed to increase pressure on companies that don't help cover insurance costs for large portions of their workers. Under Massachusetts' healthcare law, employers who did not enroll at least a quarter of their workers in an insurance plan or contribute a third of the premium costs faced a $295 annual fee per worker. The fees only applied to businesses with 11 or more full time workers, but the new regulations stipulate that companies with more than 50 full-time employees will have to meet both tests.
Hoover, AL's quest for a hospital took an important step when a state regulatory council chose Brookwood Medical Center's proposal for a facility. The approval puts Brookwood's plan before the public for a 35-day open comment period which will begin at the end of October and end around January. Baptist Health, which came also proposed a Hoover hospital, did not oppose the project, saying it feared it would cause a delay in the process.
Despite a monthlong delay due to two hurricanes, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration still believes there is time to strike a deal with the Bush administration to overhaul the state's Medicaid program. The proposed pilot program would steer as many as 380,000 Medicaid recipients, most of them children, into managed-care networks. The administration's goal is to launch it in the New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, and Shreveport regions by mid-2010. Louisiana is among a handful of states that still rely exclusively on a fee-for-service model to deliver Medicaid services.
GE Healthcare sells machines that discover why people are sick, and now its new chief executive, John Dineen, now must cure what ails the business. The division has been plagued by factory-production glitches that led to a federally ordered plant shutdown, an aborted acquisition, and shrinking insurance payments that has decreased demand for GE's products. The unit's operating profit fell 4% in the first half of 2008, and this summer the division laid off hundreds of workers.
Under a proposed U.K. plan, unhealthy people could be offered cash payments as an incentive to go and see their general practitioner. Proponents say spending small amounts now could save the National Health Service thousands of pounds later by helping to prevent diabetes, heart disease or weight problems. But critics complain the plan is tantamount to bribing patients at a time when cancer sufferers are having to do without potentially life-extending drugs.
Thomas Kmetz, president of Norton Audubon Hospital, has been named the next president of Louisville, KY-based Kosair Children's Hospital. Kmetz will be responsible for expanding Norton's pediatric services as well as operating the 263-bed Kosair Children's. That job includes helping develop the children's outpatient center that Norton is building in northeastern Jefferson County, KY.
