A struggling economy and impatient private investment firms could be slowing the push into retail medicine, according to Merchant Medicine, a Minneapolis-based research and consulting firm that advises providers and employers on how to work within the retail clinic industry. The number of retail clinics fell by 12 last month, to 969 from 981, according to Merchant Medicine. A year ago, they were opening at a rate of about one a day, figures show.
Representatives of HCA Inc. and a partnership of Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Maury Regional Hospital squared off before a Tennessee agency over rival proposals to offer cancer therapy in Spring Hill. The Vanderbilt proposal, which calls for a $7.4 million facility, was approved by a 10-0 vote. The healthcare review panel rejected the HCA's rival project by a 6-4 vote.
Springfield, MO-based system CoxHealth has agreed to pay $60 million to resolve allegations of Medicare fraud and other irregularities. The U.S. attorney's office in Kansas City said that CoxHealth would pay $35 million immediately, followed by five yearly payments of $5 million each. In a separate agreement with the Office of Inspector General of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, Cox signed a "corporate integrity agreement" to ensure its compliance with Medicare and other federal requirements.
A new Pacific Northwest medical school has celebrated its opening. The College of Osteopathic Medicine plans to send primary care doctors to serve in rural and low-income areas in a five-state region. Seventy percent of the students are from the Pacific Northwest. The college already has agreements with hospitals, clinics and doctors in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana to provide clinical training to students in their third and fourth years.
After patients complained for years about valuables disappearing, in 2006 Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital tightened its policy about the handling of patients' valuables. But property continued to vanish: There were 260 thefts involving patients, employees and visitors in 2007, compared with 262 in 2006 and 279 in 2005. Now
hospital officials are, once again, changing Grady's security policy regarding patients' valuables.
Ronald Herberman, MD, the director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and UPMC Cancer Centers, plans to issue an advisory to faculty and staff about the possible health risks associated with cellular phone use. The advisory suggests measures to limit exposure to electromagnetic radiation emitted by the devices. It also recommends that children not use cell phones except in emergencies. Herberman said he hoped the suggestions would spread to others within Pitt and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, as well as to the general public.
Neighborhood opponents of a new hospital in Montgomery County's East Norriton Township in Pennsylvania have withdrawn two legal challenges to the project, according to representatives for Albert Einstein Healthcare Network. Einstein and Montgomery Hospital are working together to build a $300 million, 192-bed hospital. Two people who live near the proposed facility had filed challenges to a change in zoning regulations.
An annual back-to-school campaign aimed at enrolling children in low-cost government insurance is now trying to get their parents and other adults signed up, too. Indiana Health Commissioner Judy Monroe, state schools superintendent Suellen Reed and Medicaid chief Jeff Wells joined advocates from Covering Kids & Families of Indiana in appealing to low-income families to enroll their children in Hoosier Healthwise and themselves in the new Healthy Indiana Plan. More than half a million Indiana residents who lack basic healthcare coverage might qualify for free or low-cost health insurance through the state programs, advocates said.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that doctors can be held liable for negligence that reduces a patient's chance of survival, even if the patient's prospect for recovery was already less than 50%. Medical malpractice lawyers said the decision could help patients who previously had little chance of collecting damages from physicians. The ruling came in a case in which a jury had awarded a $1 million judgment to the family of a man whose stomach cancer was overlooked by a doctor. The court recognized for the first time a doctrine known as "loss of chance," which allows a patient whose odds of recovery are 50% or less to receive damages for any negligence that reduced those odds.
A coalition of business and insurance groups is lobbying lawmakers against Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s plan to collect millions of dollars from them to help close a $130 million funding gap this year for the state’s health insurance law. The coalition is pushing an alternative that would require all Massachusetts Medicaid patients to join managed care plans. The coalition says mandatory managed care would save the state $160 million this fiscal year and between $690 million and $1 billion by 2013. The Patrick administration disputes the contention that the managed care proposal would save money.
