Two doctors are planning on opening urgent care clinics in Fort Worth and Arlington, TX. The clinics are targeting patients with minor injuries, infections, and other ailments that often prompt visits to hospital emergency rooms.
The insurance industry says coverage for weight-loss surgery is not justified because of concerns about safety and long-term effectiveness. But advocates for the obese are blaming prejudice and outdated views of the risks involved.
Some intensive-care units in New York and South Carolina are about to get copper fittings as part of a project to test if drug-resistant bacteria survive better on stainless steel than on copper.
During an 18-month pilot project, nine California hospitals were able to prevent an estimated 600 healthcare-associated infections by using a data-mining program to comb through computerized records and flagging infections to thwart their spread.
San Francisco will move ahead with plans to expand health services for uninsured residents while appealing a federal court ruling that, if upheld, could thwart the city's effort to achieve universal coverage.
Under legislation that California Sen. Elaine Alquist plans to introduce, the state would have one of the most sweeping laws in the nation for tracking "superbugs" in hospitals and other settings. The bill would require hospitals and nursing homes to make public their infection rates.
Butler (PA) Memorial Hospital will get $13.5 million in state funding for an expansion that is expected to create more than 500 jobs. The expansion will include a seven-story acute care tower and a variety of road improvements.
Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh is now UPMC Mercy after the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center took over the city's oldest hospital in a $120 million deal.
Access to the prescription writing habits of physicians is becoming a new battleground. For example, every state in New England has a prescription transparency issue in dispute. A new law was to take effect in Maine on Jan. 1 making the prescription writing habits of physicians confidential under state law.
Sponges are the most common foreign objects left behind in surgeries, according to several medical-device companies. Now, spiking costs are forcing providers to tighten surgical procedures aimed at making sure sponges are not left inside patients because retrieving a sponge in a redo surgery can cost $50,000 or more.