It takes an average of 934 days from the receipt of a complaint to the completion of judicial review, according to Medical Board of California's most recent annual report. The length of time it takes to resolve complaints has been increasing overall during the last decade, and the Medical Board has been criticized because of the long waits.
The board for Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta has announced the long-awaited appointment of a 17-member board charged with pulling the hospital out of a financial mire that threatened its existence. The heads of some of metro Atlanta's top businesses and institutions will serve on the board of the new private, nonprofit Grady Memorial Hospital Corporation, along with some members of the old Grady board.
Under a state senator's plan, all New Jersey residents would be required to have some form of health insurance within three years. Sen. Joseph F. Vitale is calling for an expansion of FamilyCare, the state's version of the federal program to provide free or low-cost health insurance to children from low-income families. An estimated 1.4 million New Jerseyans do not have health insurance.
Most of Philadelphia's prestigious teaching hospitals and their affiliates are saying no to an increasingly popular form of medical insurance for the elderly. The state of Pennsylvania is set to change its medical retirement benefit for its 62,000 retirees. Health advocates have testified before Congress that one of the kinds of plans offered to Pennsylvania retirees, known as a private fee-for-service plan, is wasteful and expensive.
By going to the Tennessee Department of Health's Web site, people can find out if the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners has taken action against a doctor, why and what the outcome was. They also can find other information to help them choose a doctor, such as where they attended school, which hospitals they can practice in and whether they have a criminal record. The link got 6.8 million hits in 2007--making it one of the most popular in all of the state government.
Hospital operator Evanston Northwestern Healthcare may link up with Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in North Chicago. Evanston Northwestern Healthcare has had a longtime affiliation with Northwestern University to assist in the graduate medical education of doctors in training, but that relationship could be on the verge of ending due to the school's demand for more money.
Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. believes it has hit a major milestone in its effort to recover from years of legal and financial troubles. For the first time in nearly four years, Tenet has logged an increase in same-hospital admissions in the 2007 fourth quarter. In addition, the hospital operator said admissions have accelerated early this year.
Cambridge (MA) Health Alliance is facing a potentially "catastrophic" loss this year and is looking to eliminate up to 300 jobs in an effort to stabilize finances. The alliance is a key part of the Boston area's healthcare network, and says it is being hit hard by the state's new healthcare reform law. The law has left the alliance responsible for providing free care for those without insurance while reducing the hospitals' compensation for such services.
Peter A. Kouides, MD, a hematologist at Rochester (NY) General Hospital, said he once had a patient with Gaucher disease who declined to be treated with a drug made by Genzyme. For years, Genzyme's representatives were always asking the hospital about why they were not treating the patient, he says. While most pharmaceutical makers do not even know the identities of most of the people taking their drugs, Genzyme knows virtually everyone with Gaucher disease. As a result, some critics say Genzyme influences treatment to an unusual extent and encourages the use of high doses of its drug.
The largest union of nurses in New York City is voicing dismay that contracts at four large hospitals have expired without a new agreement being reached. The nurses believe that the hospitals--St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan, St. Luke's-Roosevelt hospitals and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia--should be generous in their contract offers in light of the nationwide nursing shortage. Michael Fraser, a spokesman for the Healthcare Association of New York State, said it was hard for hospitals to pay nurses more even though the nursing shortage was expected to grow worse.
