A day after the California Senate killed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to expand healthcare coverage to residents, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner vowed to make sure that current insurance laws were strictly enforced and ordered new audits of the state's largest health insurers. The goals is to make sure the insurers cover members' medical needs and pay physicians and hospitals what they owe them--and on time.
Grady Memorial Hospital's board has ousted chief executive Otis Story , effective immediately, and his position will be filled temporarily by the Atlanta hospital board's chairwoman, state Rep. Pam Stephenson. The decision to fire Story apparently was made following the Grady board's vote to approve a long-discussed plan to transfer power over hospital policy from the Grady board to a nonprofit corporation. Stephenson said she will temporarily give up her law practice to become a full-time executive for Grady.
Loyola University Health System has announced that it will take over the 250-bed Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park, IL, as well as related facilities on the hospital's campus. Loyola's $90 million merger with Gottlieb will result in an extension of Loyola's more specialized care to the Gottlieb Memorial and fill Gottlieb's unused beds, said Loyola representatives.
The defeat of the $14.9 billion bill backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez is a setback for state initiatives, but doesn't necessarily damp prospects for national reform. That is because California's enormous uninsured population and shaky fiscal health made it a poor prospect for change. But the demise of California's proposed healthcare restructuring underscores a difficulty states face in achieving universal insurance coverage: their inability to slow the upward trajectory of healthcare costs, analysts said.
A new Pfizer Inc. HIV drug will soon be reformulated in an effort to prevent the transmission of the virus. The New York drug maker is expected to announce that it will license its new medicine, Selzentry, to a nonprofit that investigates ways to turn HIV medicines for infected patients into vaginal substances to prevent transmission to women during sex. The partnership offers a low-risk way for Pfizer to find out if the medicine could become a frequently taken drug, while potentially offering an empowering concept to women in the developing world.
Should a murderer ever be allowed to practice medicine? The question has come into focus in the case of a Nazi sympathizer who entered a famed Swedish medical school in 2007, seven years after being convicted of a hate murder. A killer turned healer might seem to be a shining example of prison rehabilitation. Yet it is hard to think of a case in which a murderer should become a medical doctor. Murder and medical practice are simply incompatible.
Doctors at about half of the 17 research centers involved in a study of the Prodisc, an artificial spinal disk, had more than a medical interest in the outcome. They stood to profit financially if the Prodisc succeeded, according to confidential information from a patient's lawsuit settled last year. The companies behind the disks and the surgeons who were willing to comment say the researchers' financial interests had no impact on findings of the research, which they say have been published in various peer-reviewed medical journals.
The nation's largest pediatricians' group said ABC should cancel the first episode of a new series, "Eli Stone," because it perpetuates the myth that vaccines can cause autism. The show's co-creators say they're not anti-vaccine and would be upset if parents chose not to immunize their children after seeing the show.
Cold medicines send about 7,000 children to hospital emergency rooms each year, according to a new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its first national estimate of the problem. About two-thirds of the cases were children who took the medicines unsupervised. However, about one-quarter involved cases in which parents gave the proper dosage and an allergic reaction or some other problem developed, the CDC reports. The study included both over-the-counter and prescription medicines.
If we can clearly define the doctor's role, says writer Dr. Michael Wilkes, it becomes far easier to select medical students who deliver on this job description. Additionally, such guidelines will then help to retool medical education (medical school, residency and continuing training) so as to create the doctor who will meet the public's expectations. And, Wilkes say, once defined, the doctor's role can be used to measure how well any doctor is performing.
