Nearly 30 people are expected to testify in Pittsburgh at the Pennsylvania Insurance Department's first public hearing on the proposed merger of Independence Blue Cross and Pittsburgh's Highmark Inc. The merger would create the largest health insurer in the state and among the largest in the nation.
Richard F. Salluzzo, MD, the new chief executive of Massachusetts-based Cape Cod Healthcare, is already putting his mark on the ailing system. Salluzzo has tapped Michael Lauf, chief operating officer of Bristol Regional Medical Center in Bristol, TN, to become chief operating officer of the Cape system. Lauf was a longtime executive from Salluzzo's former company, Kingsport, TN-based Wellmont Health System. Cape Cod Healthcare doctors and other employees say they anticipate additional top level changes at the system, which includes Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis and Falmouth Hospital.
U.S. surgeons say they are seeing an influx of overseas patients who are taking advantage of the weak dollar to schedule cosmetic surgery. As a result, U.S. hospitals and prominent plastic surgeons have begun to tailor marketing campaigns targeted at Europeans, touting both their medical expertise as well as lower cost. Some U.S. plastic surgeons are promoting themselves through in-flight magazines.
Rising prices for cancer drugs are disrupting relationships with patients, causing doctors to go into debt, and threatening to interfere with treatment options. Driving the problem is a new generation of drugs that are transforming cancer care, providing oncologists with the first new options in decades for desperately ill patients. But several months of treatment on these drugs can equal the down payment on a home or a child’s college tuition.
Congress returns to work with Medicare high on the agenda and Senate Republicans under pressure after a barrage of radio and television advertisements blamed them for a 10.6% cut in payments to doctors who care for Medicare patients. How to pay doctors through the federal health insurance program is an issue that lawmakers are forced to confront every year because of what is widely agreed to be an outdated reimbursement formula. But the dispute showcases the continued potency of healthcare issues, which has reached a new level of urgency this year.
New Jersey has an estimated 1.3 million people without health insurance, and state law requires that hospitals treat anyone who walks through their doors and then get reimbursed later. But New Jersey's looming budget shortfall has forced it to cut back on the reimbursements, and hospitals are going broke: Six have closed in the past 18 months, and half of those remaining are operating in the red. As the economy falters, the number of uninsured is likely to grow. And with more hospitals expected to shut their doors, New Jersey faces a healthcare crisis.
An experienced surgeon at Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center recently operated on the wrong side of a patient, a mistake disclosed in an e-mail that hospital administrators sent to staff members. Massachusetts authorities are investigating the errant surgery, which happened during an elective procedure. The mistake happened as hospitals, regulators, and insurers are devoting unprecedented attention to combating medical errors. In June, Massachusetts said it would stop reimbursing hospitals for medical costs associated with mistakes.
With the stock markets sagging, gas prices increasing, and the economy ailing, doctors, dentists and hospitals are fighting to stay out of the red. Experts say it'll likely be a while before their higher costs are passed on to consumers, because salaries and other contracts are negotiated at intervals over the year. With medical inflation already running at 4.5% this year, compared with 4.1% for overall consumer prices, the rising costs will inevitably creep into patients' bills, experts say.
Experts say emergency rooms have become all-purpose dumping grounds for the mentally ill, with patients routinely marooned a day or more while staff try to find someone to care for them. A survey of hundreds of U.S. hospitals released by the American College of Emergency Physicians found that 79% reported that they routinely "boarded" psychiatric patients in their waiting rooms for at least some period of time because of the unavailability of immediate services. One-third reported that those stays averaged at least eight hours, and 6% said they had average waits of more than 24 hours for the next step in a patient's care.
California's drug and alcohol diversion program for doctors has quietly ceased operation after 27 years. The now-defunct program for physicians was operated by the California Medical Board. California Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas has now authored a bill which would set uniform standards by January 2010 to monitor health professionals in treatment programs.
