More than 4,200 nurses, support staff, maintenance workers and clerical employees at the five Mercy Health Partners hospitals in Greater Cincinnati will vote on whether to unionize. In a deal with the Service Employees International Union, Mercy and its parent company have agreed not to try to influence employee voting. If employees choose a union, they will start negotiating a contract. If they reject a union, the SEIU has agreed not to campaign at Mercy hospitals for three years.
Healthcare networks are trailing residential growth in southern Mecklenburg County, NC, and Carolinas Medical Center-Pineville is the latest example. The 109-bed hospital was given state approval for a $174 million expansion that includes plans to upgrade it to a Level III trauma center. The hospital will be able to treat patients with more severe injuries instead of sending them to Carolinas Medical Center. The project will add a heart surgery program and more than double the size of the 200,000-square-foot campus.
The city attorney for Los Angeles is asking Blue Cross of California to substantiate claims it made in a news release about the process of canceling a patient's coverage. In the release, Blue Cross claimed that it was developing a third-party review process to consider cases of coverage cancellation, known in the trade as "rescissions." As well as wanting substantiation that the insurer is developing a third-party review process, the city attorney's office asked for proof of several other claims, including that the insurer is simplifying its application process.
Members of the Montgomery County, PA, bar association and medical society, along with Abington Memorial Hospital, are launching a pilot project they hope will keep more malpractice disputes out of court. Lawyers and doctors will work in teams to mediate conflicts between patients and the hospital or doctors to try to resolve problems more quickly and humanely. John J. Kelly, Abington Memorial's chief of staff, said that instead of saving money, he wants to avoid the "harshness" of litigation.
Iowa Lt. Governor Patty Judge has released a report by a task force charged with developing recommendations to make Iowa a better place for nursing professionals. The report outlines challenges faced by nurses in the state, and recommends what can be done to overcome them. Some of the changes suggested in the report include improving educational programs, increasing nursing faculty, and encouraging public health facilities to increase nursing wages and meet national salary averages.
Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston will unveil a new name, dropping "New England" and emphasizing the hospital's ties to Tufts University. The medical center will use part of the official university logo, and its pediatric affiliate for children will become Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center. The rebranding will be accompanied by new signage to help make the medical school's campus appear more cohesive and by a $1.5 million advertising campaign to reintroduce Boston's oldest hospital.
Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray has proposed a total ban on all gifts and freebies to doctors from pharmaceutical companies. If approved, the move would make Massachusetts the first state in the country to ban such gifts outright. The measure is part of a set of healthcare reform measures Murray filed in a bill that also includes requiring all doctors statewide to adopt electronic medical records by 2015, allowing patients to choose nurse practitioners as primary care providers, and forcing public reviews of any insurance company efforts to boost annual premiums by more than 7 percent.
States estimate that proposed changes to Medicaid would cost them about $50 billion in federal aid over the next five years, according to a Democratic congressional report. One proposed regulation would limit Medicaid reimbursement to public hospitals to no more than the cost of providing a particular service, and another would prohibit billing Medicaid for the costs of medical interns and residents. Federal officials say the changes are designed to ensure that providers don't bill the program for more than the costs of providing care and that each states pay their fair share.
An outbreak of hepatitis C at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada may represent "the tip of an iceberg" of safety problems at clinics around the country, according to the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nevada health officials are trying to contact about 40,000 patients who received anesthesia by injection at the clinic between March 2004 and Jan. 11 to urge them to get tested. Healthcare accreditors "would consider this a patient safety error that falls into the category of a 'never event,' meaning this should never happen in contemporary healthcare organizations," said CDC head Julie Gerberding.
Oregon will draw names for the chance to enroll in a healthcare program designed for people not poor enough for Medicaid but still cannot afford to buy their own insurance. More than 80,000 people have signed up since registration for the lottery opened, but only a few thousand will be chosen for the program.
