The Robert W. Woodruff Foundation has emerged as the most probable source of a $200 million bailout for Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital. The Foundation, with assets of $2.7 billion, is Atlanta's most influential charitable foundation. The identity of the donor has been a mystery since summer 2007, when representatives of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce announced that an anonymous donor was willing to provide a major amount of money to save the foundering hospital. The hospital has fallen increasingly into debt because of rising healthcare costs, dwindling government aid, a lack of paying customers, and years of neglect.
A congressional bill under review in Connecticut is meant to reduce the instances in which an insurer can refuse to cover pre-existing conditions. Under the bill, a person changing health plans could be subject to a three-month waiting period under the new plan for coverage of pre-existing health problems, instead of 12 months under current federal law. An insurer can also only look back at 30 days of a person's health record to determine whether there are pre-existing conditions subject to the waiting period, instead of the current six-month "look-back" period that is allowed.
Despite the demand for coveted specialty slots, nationwide figures for this year's "match day" showed some signs of reversing a trend away from primary care areas such as family and internal medicine. The 7.6 percent of U.S. medical school seniors that matched in family medicine is a slight growth over last year. Part of the reason for the reversal is because more positions were offered in that area to help bolster the number of doctors practicing general medicine.
The University of Tennessee Health Science Center provides about 300 graduates a year to a state facing a shortage of pharmacists, nurses and nearly every other kind of medical professional. But now the school is facing an aging infrastructure, an inability to pull in top job candidates, and dwindling state funds. School administrators are now worrying that the problems could spread to student recruitment and, ultimately, the quality of Tennessee healthcare.
Louisville, KY-based managed care company Humana Inc. has announced plans to buy Peoria,IL-based health insurer OSF HealthPlans for about $90 million. The deal means OSF HealthPlans parent, hospital operator OSF Healthcare, will be exiting the health insurance business. The move reflects a trend seen in the last several years of providers of medical-care to focus on their core business of providing care rather than paying for medical-care service.
An audit and investigation has found that two senior executives of Emerson Hospital in Concord, MA, created documents that misstated the hospital's financial condition over parts of three fiscal years. The executives made the hospital's performance appear better than it actually was, at a time when it was seeking donations for a major expansion. As a result, Emerson violated some promises it made to lenders that forced the hospital to reclassify some of its borrowing as short-term debt. The move could now limit Emerson's borrowing ability.
The new Massachusetts subsidized health insurance program will cost "significantly" more than the $869 million Governor Deval Patrick proposed in his 2009 budget, according to the state's top financial official. To close the gap, the state has asked insurers, hospitals, healthcare advocates, and business leaders to propose ways to cut costs and raise revenue. Several dozen proposals have been put forward already, including raising assessments on insurers, hospitals, and businesses.
Due to the rising expenditures for cancer drugs and other high-priced medicines, employers, health plans and pharmacy-benefit managers are increasing efforts to rein in spending. To curb use, payers are pushing for legislation to permit the sale of cheaper versions of biotech drugs. They are also reinforcing rules about trying cheaper therapies first and early certification of patients' prescriptions. Some are even suggesting paying drug companies based on how well a drug works, rather than how much is used.
China's drug safety agency is ordering authorities to tighten controls on production of heparin, the blood-thinner linked to 19 deaths and hundreds of allergic reactions in the United States. China's order requires heparin producers to obtain the raw chemicals used to make the drug from registered suppliers. Raw heparin suppliers, meanwhile, are required to improve their management and tests on their products.
Three days after a cardiac unit opened at the municipal hospital in Tarusa, Russia, Tarusa's mayor fired the hospital's head doctor and sent in the police to check for possible fraud in the refurbishing of the hospital, all of which had been financed privately. Doctors at the hospital said the crackdown was the result of a campaign by local officials to gain control of tens of thousands of dollars that were to be used for refurbishing the once-crumbling hospital.
