Akron (OH) Children's Hospital is expanding into the Youngstown, OH, area to fill a void left after Tod Children's Hospital closed in 2007. A $10 million renovation is under way at the former Forum Health campus in Boardman to create a new 32-bed children's hospital, with a full-time emergency department, full-service laboratory, and inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation services. The facility will be called Akron Children's Hospital Mahoning Valley.
Going to a convenient care clinic is cheaper for patients than going to a physician's office or urgent care, but there is no evidence that the advent of the popular retail clinics reduced medical costs overall. A new study has found prices charged by all providers rose by double digits over the four years tracked, a trend that went against the conventional wisdom that more providers leads to more competition and lower prices.
Massachusetts-based Cape Cod Healthcare's credit rating will be lowered in a report set to be released by bond rating agency Standard & Poor's. The report will lower the hospital system's rating one grade from BBB to BBB-, just above ratings that are considered speculative, or "junk" bond level. But the rating agency also upgraded its long-term outlook for Cape Cod Healthcare from negative to stable, in part because of its confidence in Richard Salluzzo, MD, the chief executive of the chain since July.
In a new twist on medical tourism, U.S. employers are encouraging workers to travel for medical care, but domestically. Some employers are looking to take advantage of geographical variations in the quality and cost of healthcare within the United States. But others are leveraging deals they've struck with foreign hospitals in order to secure better rates with U.S. hospitals that are eager to keep American patients here. Most of the activity is focused on surgical procedures.
A new online tool called the Community Checkup report now lets Seattle-area consumers look up information about how well healthcare is practiced in the region. The report allows consumers to examine local performance for several health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, depression, and low back pain. It includes performance results for 26 hospitals, using public data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare recently laid out its financial position and plans for the future in a recent bond filing. About one in three admissions to a St. Louis-area hospital go to one of BJC's nine area hospitals, and this market dominance hasn't changed much over the last 10 years, said Chief Executive Steve Lipstein. Maintaining that position requires constant investment in new technology and new facilities, a strong physician referral system, and a profitable mix of patients, he said.
Bakersfield, CA-based San Joaquin Community Hospital is moving ahead with plans to open the only burn center between Fresno and Los Angeles. Hospital officials are recruiting doctors and other healthcare professionals and plan to affiliate with an existing burn center. The five-bed intensive care unit will cost $1 million, officials said.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is considering instituting a permanent, independent investigator to keep watch over the county's troubled hospital and clinic system. The proposal came a day after new disclosures about the level of incompetence among employees at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. The investigator job was proposed by Supervisor Gloria Molina, who said trouble at the Los Angeles hospital developed in part because officials with the county Department of Health Services kept problems secret from the board.
Days before he took office, new Grady Memorial Hospital CEO Michael Young decided to examine every check over $1,000 that the Atlanta facility had issued to vendors for one week in July. The massive hospital is a spending monster with hundreds of vendors, so there were more than 100 checks totaling upward of $1.7 million. Young hit upon checks that shocked him, such as the $100,000 one-week payment for temporary employees, including nurses and X-ray technicians. While it is not uncommon for a financial auditor to review spending this way, it is rare for a CEO to take on such a mundane, time-consuming task, experts say.
Humana Inc. has announced it expects to lose nearly 10% of its Medicare drug-plan enrollees at the start of next year because it bid premiums too high to win an allotment of low-income, government-assigned members. Humana shares fell nearly 5% to $41.75 in after-hours trading after it announced it would lose all of its 308,000 "dual-eligible" Medicare members. Such members are a source of instant market share for many of the companies that sell and administer the benefit.
