The American Alliance of Healthcare Providers has released its list of winners in the annual Hospital of Choice Awards. The honor recognizes America's most "consumer-friendly" hospitals.
The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's annual analysis to help health leaders identify areas of healthcare delivery that need quality improvement now includes information such as each state's rate of obesity, health insurance coverage, mental illness and the number of specialist doctors. The updated State Snapshots Web tool also tracks each states' progress toward reaching government-set health goals for 2010.
A federal court has dismissed a whistle-blower lawsuit alleging that hospital owner Iasis Healthcare allowed unnecessary medical procedures to be performed and illegally compensated doctors for patient referrals. The suit was filed against Iasis Healthcare in 2005 in the U.S. District Court of Arizona.
Jamaica says it has successfully launched free healthcare for all adults in public hospitals across the Caribbean country. The abolition of user fees at hospitals was going smoothly this week, with patients forming orderly lines while waiting to be seen, according to Health Minister Rudyard Spencer.
A new study shows a glaring gap between the number of California doctors of color compared with the state's ethnically diverse population. For example, The University of California- San Francisco study found that out of nearly 62,000 practicing doctors in California, only 5% are Latino even though Latinos comprise a third of the state's total population. The disparity is alarming because minority physicians are far more likely to practice primary care medicine and work with poor or uninsured patients in communities with a chronic shortage of physicians.
People with health insurance are having more trouble paying for prescription drugs due to higher out-of-pocket costs for medications and a slowing economy, according to surveys and healthcare analysts. The Virginia-based National Patient Advocate Foundationfound that 31% of the 44,729 people it aided last year cited drug co-payments as their top medical-debt problem.
Months before UCLA Medical Center caught staffers looking at the medical records of Britney Spears, Farrah Fawcett learned that a hospital employee had gone through records of her cancer treatments there. UCLA terminated the employee who inappropriately reviewed Fawcett's records. Despite greater attention to medical privacy, the hospital records of high-profile and other patients have been breached across the country as record-keeping systems have become computerized, experts say.
The Sun Valley Health Clinic has opened on the grounds of a local middle school in Sun Valley, located in the northern tip of Los Angeles. Officials hope that by placing a full-service community clinic on a school campus, it creates a convenient location for families to get regular health services. Proponents are hailing the facility as a turning point for the district of 84,000 mostly working-class Latino residents, where one-third of the population is uninsured.
Workers at the 176-bed Woman's Hospital in Mesquite, TX, have been informed that the facility will close because it's losing money. Naples, FL-based Health Management Associates Inc. has owned Woman's Hospital and its sister hospital, Dallas Regional Medical Center in Mesquite, since 2002. "Unfortunately, our Woman's Hospital continues to operate at a significant financial loss that necessitates its closure," Roy Vinson, chief executive of the Dallas Regional Medical Center, told the Dallas Morning News.
New Jersey Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts Jr. says Gov. Jon Corzine must immediately name a special inspector to oversee health programs for the poor. The Legislature approved a Medicaid inspector general and Corzine signed the position into law in March of 2007, but more than a year has passed without him filling the job. Two state audits have now found numerous examples of waste in Medicaid and another health program for the poor.
