Over the last few years, Connecticut's hospitals have been pleading with lawmakers for millions in taxpayer dollars to shore up their sinking bottom lines. At the same time, the amount those hospitals paid their top executives has nearly doubled. Salaries paid to top hospital executives grew an estimated 95 percent from 2002-2006, according to a task force convened by Gov. M. Jodi Rell.
Thousands of prisoners and out-of-state residents are part of a group of 154,000 TennCare enrollees who can't legally be removed from the program, even though they do not meet eligibility requirements. Officials with TennCare to ask federal court sometime this week to make people in these group go through the same annual eligibility checks that are required of other enrollees. Disability advocates say the move could have dire consequences.
The Cook County (IL) Task Force on Hospital Governance is finalizing a proposed ordinance that would give control of the county's hospitals and clinics to a seven-member board of directors picked by the Cook County board president and approved by the commissioners. But some critics are questioning whether the new board can be truly independent if the board president alone nominates its members, as opposed to consulting a nominating committee.
Wisconsin Medical Examining Board records show that only 213 of the 2,400 complaints filed about physicians in the state from 2002 and 2006 resulted in some kind of discipline. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also says in a report that the board was slow to look into complaints, and keeps many of its investigations secret.
To cut costs while improving the experience for patients, some hospitals are adopting cutting-edge business tactics to improve their processes. For example, efficiency experts are sweeping through Boston-area hospitals, bringing cutting-edge business school methodologies to healthcare providers.
A pilot program to audit Medicare claims filed by hospitals and others in three states recouped nearly $250 million last year but is drawing fire from healthcare providers as it prepares to go national. The program, which relies on private-sector auditing firms to comb through past claims filed by providers, recovered $247.4 million for Medicare last year from medical providers in California, Florida and New York. Hospital groups have mounted a campaign against its expansion, saying the effort is "riddled with flaws" and suffered too many problems to expand.
A Senate health committee is expected to vote against California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's widely promoted bill on universal healthcare. A "no" vote would effectively kill the bill, which would also need voter approval to become law. The bill, which would offer coverage to millions of uninsured Californians, passed the State Assembly but began to stall in the Senate after the state's legislative analyst raised questions about its financing and two prominent Democrats announced they would vote against it.
Diabetes-related medical and economic costs in the United States hit $174 billion in 2007, a 32 percent increase from 2002, according to a study commissioned by the American Diabetes Association. The research, found medical care costs for people with diabetes were about $116 billion, and a disproportionate percentage of those costs resulted from the treatment and hospitalization of people with diabetes-related complications.
A small but growing number of American families beset by major medical problems are learning that having health insurance is sometimes not enough. Those with costly chronic illnesses can easily rack up medical bills that blow through the lifetime benefits cap of $1 million or more that is a standard part of many insurance policies. That has left some very sick people facing healthcare tabs of hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.
Tenet Healthcare Corp. has entered into a new multiyear agreement with Blue Cross of California, Tenet's second-largest managed-care payer nationally. The contract, which takes effect Feb. 1, 2008, covers 16 acute-care hospitals in California. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
