Faced with mounting deficits caused mainly by insufficient state aid to cover all its uninsured patients, officials at Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center in Plainfield said they will close the 130-year-old facility later this year. The Union County hospital plans to file formal papers with the state Department of Health and Senior Services on March 1 seeking the closure. If approved, programs and services will be phased out during a "wind down" period before Muhlenberg finally stops admitting patients.
Hospitals in the Tampa Bay, FL, area are approaching any bill-paying changes cautiously for fear of ending up with the kind of public relations disaster that hit Hot Spring County Medical Center in Arkansas. To increase its cash flow, Hot Spring sold patient debt to a private finance company, CompleteCare, which tacked on interest and billed the patient. As a result, an uninsured patient who could only afford $100 a month to the hospital was stuck with a bill more than four times that size from CompleteCare.
40 protesters who rallied to keep supportive services such as emergency care and obstetrics at Saint James Hospital in Newark, NJ. Newark United to Save Saint James, a group of hospital employees, residents and church leaders led the charge in this and four other rallies, in an effort to save this and Columbus Hospital in the city's North Ward. The two hospitals were sold in January by Cathedral Healthcare System. Catholic Health East has agreed to maintain a 24-hour satellite emergency room, prenatal clinic and mental health clinic at Saint James, but those at the most recent rally fear the services will not remain there for long and are asking for a minimum five-year agreement.
Working in partnership with two South Florida universities, Boca Raton (FL) Community Hospital had originally scheduled to begin construction this year on a large academic medical center. Instead, a $42 million loss is pulling attention away from the $600 million project. The hospital's new chief executive officer could not say when construction would begin and acknowledged the project could fall apart if revenue and the overall economy don't improve.
MilwaukeeCares, an initiative announced nearly three years ago to recruit volunteer doctors to treat uninsured patients in Milwaukee County, has drawn far fewer doctors than hoped. The Medical Society of Milwaukee County had hoped to persuade 80 percent to 90 percent of the estimated 4,000 physicians in the county to accept a few uninsured patients each month or even each year. Currently, less than 3 percent have volunteered.
Under a proposal in the Missouri General Assembly, ambulances transporting certain heart attack and stroke patients would would skip some facilities and go directly to the best-prepared hospitals. Under the state's current system, ambulances already bypass less-prepared hospitals to take severely injured patients to specially staffed and equipped trauma centers.
About one in five patients treated last year at Kenneth Hall Regional Hospital in East St. Louis, lacked insurance, and another 40 percent were covered by health programs for the poor that pay less than the cost of care. As a result, Kenneth Hall has lost an average of $3 million a year in the last five years. In addition, these losses would have been double without a buoy of grants, rental fees for hospital space and other revenue streams.
Northrop Grumman Corp. has formed a partnership with the Defense Department and Pennsylvania-based Conemaugh Health System to build a prototype system to move health records between military and civilian medical facilities. Members of the military and their dependents could use the system throughout their lifetime if the experimental electronic transfer system becomes a reality.
Sixty physicians at multiple locations near the city of Barrie, Ontario will upgrade to an electronic medical record and practice management system. The Barrie and Community Family Health Team intends to implement the integrated Clinical Management Solution from CLINICARE Corporation.
The US Department of Agriculture is calling on companies from the food and electronic industries to join the MyPyramid program which aims to provide science-based information about healthy food choices. The MyPyramid program proposes a number of hi-tech initiatives to promote healthy eating, such as video games for kids, podcasts of good nutritional messages or free CD-Roms given away with food products.
