Once admired for its skill in treating a population afflicted by both social and physical ills, Grady, a teaching hospital, now faces the prospect of losing its accreditation. Only short-term financial transfusions have kept it from closing its doors, as Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in Los Angeles County did last year. That scenario would flood the region's other hospitals with uninsured patients and eliminate the training ground for one of every four Georgia doctors.
Over the holidays I decided to have some minor surgery that I'd been putting off for a while. I intended to keep the whole thing private (you'll read why in a minute) and I planned to be back at work just in time for the Iowa caucuses. Well, as the saying goes: "We plan, God laughs;" and I guarantee He's still laughing over what happened to me next.
Dayton (OH) Heart Hospital is planning a $3.5 million expansion that would add at least 26 new beds,according to hospital adminstrators. The 47-bed hospital is also looking into expanding its care beyond heart-related illnesses, administrators added.
In a dramatic move, all unionized employees at Aliquippa (PA) Community Hospital have been fired. The $22.75 million sale of the acute-care hospital to Commonwealth Medical Center was approved Nov. 30 in Beaver County Common Pleas Court, after efforts to recover from bankruptcy faltered and the hospital moved from nonprofit to for-profit status.
More than two years after filing a lawsuit aimed at improving health care for Florida's poorest children, lawyers representing the state's leading pediatric associations will meet for a mediation to settle the dispute with state officials. The class-action suit charges that more than 500,000 Medicaid-eligible Florida children are receiving no preventive health services "because of the defendants' violation of federal law."
A new bill on the table would establish the Vermont Hospital Security Plan, a universal healthcare system that would provide in- and outpatient hospital care to all state residents. Under the bill's provisions, each hospital would negotiate an annual budget and then live within it.
After two years of controversy over the withdrawal of two of its member hospitals, Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati CEO Ken Hanover is now seeking a new job. Hanover has been identified as a finalist for a hospital executive job at West Penn Allegheny Health System. Hanover helped bolster profits at the Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati after he arrived in 2001, but also became the target of stinging criticism from several member hospitals.
The family of a newborn twin who died after what a Pennsylvania hospital acknowledges was a medication error has filed a lawsuit against the hospital. An overdose of the medicine sent both babies into cardiac arrest, which caused the twins "catastrophic and permanent injuries," according to the lawsuit against Geisinger Medical Center in Danville.
Aetna and the American Medical Association are in a dispute centering on how much Aetna pays out-of-network doctors in some instances and the right of those doctors to bill HMO members for charges the insurer doesn't pay. Millions of dollars are at stake, and physicians say Aetna is violating a provision of its 2003 nationwide settlement with doctors. Aetna says it is only trying to protect members from high charges.
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino has embarked on a public campaign yesterday to block CVS Corp. and other retailers from opening medical clinics inside their stores. Massachusetts regulators recently paved the way for the in-store clinics, and Menino said the decision would threaten patient safety.
