Oak Hill Hospital has become the only facility in Hernando County (FL) designated an accredited site by the Society of Chest Pain Center. The hospital is also only one of nine in the state to receive accreditation from the international nonprofit group this year. The society is a nonprofit group that aims to bridge cardiology, emergency medicine and other professions focused on improving care for patients with acute coronary syndromes and acute heart failure.
Ethical difficulties have prompted the St. Bernard Parish (LA) Council to consider trying to reshape the Hospital Services District Commission it appointed late last year. But in the meantime, the council has agreed to support legislation that would allow two doctors to serve on the commission even though they work for one of two hospital groups vying to win a lucrative contract from the commission.
Tacoma, WA-based MultiCare Health System plans to open two clinics in Rite Aid stores, in Tacoma and Lakewood, the first week of August. MultiCare is believed to be the first hospital system in Washington to open in-store clinics. Andrew Baron, MD, primary care medical director for MultiCare Medical Group, says MultiCare will be able to create and maintain an electronic medical record for a patient "that ties our retail clinics to our hospitals, our emergency rooms, that ties our retail clinics to our primary care physicians and specialists as well."
California Attorney General Jerry Brown has unveiled a plan to provide doctors and pharmacists with almost instant Internet access to patient prescription drug histories to help prevent so-called doctor shopping and other abuses of pharmaceuticals. Brown said that the state's prescription monitoring needs significant improvements because it now can take healthcare professionals weeks to obtain information on drug use by patients. That delay can allow some patients to get large quantities of drugs from multiple doctors for personal use or sale, he said.
As more immigrants to Greater Boston have created a higher demand for medical interpreters, the profession is racing to catch up.
Now a Boston-based group, the International Medical Interpreters Association, is pushing for a national certification program. The goal is to standardize the profession in medicine, which is the fastest-growing of all interpreter fields.
Massachusetts businesses have joined with most of the state's health insurers in a new lobbying group called the Coalition for Affordable Health Care. The group is aimed at controlling healthcare costs and preventing more universal-coverage expenses from being shifted to employers. Representatives from the Coalition said it will fight efforts to increase assessments on employers who do not provide health coverage for workers. It will also oppose raising the standards for what constitutes a "reasonable" contribution under the state's healthcare overhaul law.
For thousands of residents of South Los Angeles who had depended on the large county-run King-Harbor hospital that closed in 2007, the past 10 months have been an exercise in cobbling together medical care. When King-Harbor was shut by federal officials, it became the 15th general acute care hospital to close in Los Angeles County since 2000. South Los Angeles continues to be one of the most difficult places in the nation to both receive and give medical care. Family doctors are few and far between, and the area is one of the hardest to draw new doctors to, physician recruiters say.
Biological, social and healthcare-related factors are responsible for the ethnic and racial disparities in results for U.S. patients with kidney disease, according to two studies. Healthcare providers can directly address some of these factors, and need to take action to eliminate disparities, say the studies' authors.
Reducing racial and regional disparities will be a major focus of a $300 million initiative to be announced by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The program targets 14 communities and regions around the country, and seeks to improve the quality of healthcare and eventually provide models for national health reform. Researchers say that one major goal of the project is to cut down on hospital admissions for certain medical conditions.
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration has given final approval to St. Vincent's HealthCare for a certificate of need to build a new 98-bed hospital in Clay County, FL. The order was handed down almost six months after an administrative law judge recommended St. Vincent's get the certificate of need for the hospital, beating out Baptist Health and HCA-owned Orange Park Medical Center.
