Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire has hailed a new agreement between nurses and hospitals to provide better nurse staffing. The hospitals have agreed to post the number of budgeted staff throughout the hospital each day--and the number who are actually on the floor each shift. The actual staffing numbers, including any lagging behind the budgeted figure, would be sent to the state. Gregoire said the greater attention to nurse staffing will lead to better patient safety and lower overall medical costs.
The University of Washington has created an anesthesia awareness registry to understand how and why awareness--being awake and able to hear or feel what is happening during a surgery--occurs in about one out of every 1,000 surgeries. The registry is a forum for patients from around the country to share their stories of awareness. Physicians then look at their medical records to try to determine if mistakes were made.
Despite efforts by hospitals to curb aggressive collections practices, the uninsured in California still pay more on average for services than government payers such as Medicare, according to researchers for the Rand Corp. and the University of Southern California. Hospital officials are criticizing the study for failing to reflect recent changes the industry has implemented to provide some relief for the uninsured.
In order to ensure that HMO patients received timely appointments with doctors, a 2002 law instructed California regulators "to develop and adopt regulations to ensure that enrollees have access to needed healthcare services in a timely manner." The law required the new rules be enacted by January 2004, but The Department of Managed Health Care did not release its proposed rules until 2007. When HMOs and doctors groups objected to them, the department scrapped the rules in favor of ones that let health plans come up with their own methods of complying with the law. The plans have to submit their guidelines in October 2008.
A Nashville City Council resolution could extend the repayment deadline on a government loan to Nashville General Hospital at Meharry for the third time. The resolution also would add $11.5 million to the amount, raising the total to nearly $32 million. The deadline to repay the loan would be June 30, 2009, three years later than the original requirement.
Advocate Health Care said that its merger talks have advanced with Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, IL. Both parties have signed a "letter of intent" to move forward with the consolidation. If the deal is finalized, Condell would become the ninth hospital under the Advocate system.
With its beeping monitors, bright lights and frequent interruptions, the ICU is not conducive to sleep. Spurred by a growing body of evidence about the health benefits of a good night's sleep, critical-care doctors and nurses have started using low-tech approaches such as eye masks, back rubs and dimmed lights that might make the difference between life and death.
The Bush administration would cut roughly $560 billion from Medicare over the next decade in order to slow the program's projected annual growth rate from 7 percent to 5 percent, said Bush in a letter to Congress outlining his last budget plan. The budget would leave intact program subsidies to insurers worth an estimated $150 billion over the same period. Some experts are calling the budget, and their associated cuts, "disastrous" for the healthcare industry.
The New Jersey State Society of Anesthesiologists and the New Jersey Gastroenterology and Endoscopy Society are opposing a plan by Aetna Inc. to drop coverage of a type of anesthesia used during colonoscopies. Doctors say patients anxious about colorectal screening may balk unless they are assured that their insurance coverage includes the cost of anesthesiologists who administer propofol.
Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn't save money, according to a Dutch study. The study found it costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, countering the common perception that preventing obesity would save millions of dollars in health costs.
