Maui Medical Group is expanding to Kihei, HI, where it will open its fourth clinic in November. Maui Medical Group, a multi-specialty group practice with more than 55 doctors, has clinics in Wailuku, Lahaina, and Pukalani.
A couple has filed an appeal challenging a decision by Michigan's insurance commissioner to let Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan raise rates for about 18,000 non-elderly people who buy their own policies. At issue is an Aug. 18 ruling by state Insurance Commissioner Ken Ross approving rate hikes averaging 15.2% for seven Blue Cross plans. The increases bring monthly premiums for a family with two high-benefit plans to $1,636 a month, up from $1,164, as they were in April 2006 when Blue Cross sought the rate hike. The cheapest family plans went up to $562 from $459 a month.
The state Department of Health and Environmental Control
board has given final approval to the South Carolina Health Plan,
and accepted agency recommendations against an open-heart surgery unit for Lexington Medical Center. Several members of the DHEC board, however, called on the Legislature to reform the process by which hospitals and other institutions can gain approval to open new programs and offer better care. Lexington Medical had hoped to meet South Carolina requirements for obtaining a Certificate of Need to open a new program by amending the health plan.
Douglas A. Ries has spent the past 25 years growing Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis. Ries now describes Cardinal Glennon as one of the most successful freestanding children's hospitals in the nation, and he attributes part of that success to the hospital's long-standing partnership with St. Louis University. Ries is leaving Cardinal Glennon as president in October, and will transition into senior network executive for university affiliations at SSM Healthcare. The new position will allow him to expand SSM's partnerships with academic medical centers, beyond pediatrics and obstetrics.
Thousands of low-income residents will no longer be covered by Polk County, FL's indigent healthcare plan after it offered more benefits than it could afford and piled up a $15 million deficit. Polk County commissioners have voted to reduce the number of people covered by the Polk HealthCare Plan, scaling it back to 3,000 people in the upcoming fiscal year. Officials say 22,000 people were enrolled in the plan during 2006-07.
Independence Blue Cross and Pittsburgh-based Highmark Inc. promise that a proposed merger would benefit the public by saving more than a billion dollars in six years. But if Highmark entered the Philadelphia market as a competitor to Independence Blue Cross, rather than a collaborator, insurance customers and healthcare providers would benefit even more, according to a consultant hired by the Pennsylvania Insurance Department.
Medicare and Medicaid patients who have questions about their coverage are encouraged to call 1-800-Medicare for answers, but many callers face long wait times or are cut off while on hold, and others receive information that is either incomplete or wrong. Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith has been overseeing an investigation of problems with the help line.
Almost half of eye clinic patients included in a study attended weekly religious services, and 82% felt that prayer was very important to their sense of well-being. The study included 124 consecutive eye clinic patients who completed a questionnaire that included questions about their spirituality. Sixty percent were being seen for vision problems related to diabetes, 15% for vein blockages, and the rest were being seen for other eye problems.
More and more Americans feel disconnected from their doctors, especially compared to a generation ago, says surgeon Pauline W. Chen in this commentary for the New York Times. And they certainly have less confidence in the profession as a whole, she adds. Chen says there is "a tragic irony" in the divide, because everyone involved just wants the best care possible. She says patients and doctors have lost the ability to converse thoughtfully with one another, and because of that loss, they can no longer discuss the meaning of illness, care, health, and policy in a way that is relevant to everyone.
The widow of a doctor killed when a woman crashed her car through a Brockton, MA, hospital entrance is suing the driver's five physicians for not informing the driver that the heavy pain killers she was taking made it unsafe to drive. At the time of the crash, the driver told police she was undergoing chemotherapy but that her treatment did not affect her driving. Her lawyer, however, said that that driver had complained to doctors at least 15 times over a four-year period of being light-headed and dizzy from the medication.
