A small clause in most company health plans allows them the right to recoup the medical expenses it paid for someone's treatment if the person also collects damages in an injury suit.
CFOs and the finance organizations they head are under intense pressure from the capital markets and activist investors to keep pace with a rapidly changing global market--to go beyond merely crunching numbers and create value on their own.
When doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center rushed to operate on a baby born last week with a life-threatening heart condition, they faced one giant hurdle: the child's parents. They refused to consent to the surgery, saying it would involve the use of blood products--a violation of their religious beliefs as Jehovah's Witnesses.
Nationwide, more than 1,300 hospitals offer palliative care, including 50 percent of facilities with more than 75 beds, according to an analysis by the American Hospital Association. That's double the number of programs in 2000. Today, nearly 30 hospitals in Tennessee provide palliative care, including Vanderbilt, Saint Thomas Hospital, Baptist Hospital and the Department of Veterans Affairs system.
Steve Dawson, MD, and his team are creating a dummy that will die if you don't treat it right. Intended for training combat medics, the smart mannequin being built from scratch in his Massachusetts General Hospital lab mimics war wounds with horrifying realism, right down to blood spurting from torn arteries, sucking chest wounds, and appalling shrieks of agony.
Caritas Carney Hospital in Dorchester, MA, has hired a consulting team to analyze the institution's business and devise ways for it to improve its financial performance. In recent years, Carney Hospital has struggled financially, in part because so many of its patients rely on Medicare and Medicaid for their insurance. Those government programs typically pay less for hospital services than private insurance plans.
Some employer and labor groups welcomed a federal decision allowing employers to offer different health benefits to retirees under 65 and those 65 and over. The ruling this week by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, they said, will allow employers to maintain benefits for younger retirees who aren't yet eligible for Medicare. Supporters of the EEOC's decision say a ruling that would have made it illegal to offer lower benefits to older retirees could have led employers to cut retiree health benefits altogether.
A federal judge put the $420 million settlement reached between UnitedHealth Group Inc. and ousted Chief Executive William McGuire temporarily on hold to ask how broadly Minnesota state law allows him to review the deal. U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum said he would keep the injunction in place while he awaits clarification from the Minnesota Supreme Court on whether he has the power to examine the merits of the settlement. Late last year, McGuire was forced to leave the company after an internal probe concluded that stock options granted to UnitedHealth executives were likely backdated on his watch.
Aetna is the latest insurer to clamp down on the use of a powerful anesthetic during an increasingly common form of colon cancer screening. The company will send a letter to doctors, saying that it plans to classify the drug as "medically unnecessary" for most such procedures. As of April 1, Aetna plans to stop paying for its use in those cases. The change by Aetna comes on the heels of similar moves last year by WellPoint and six months ago by Humana. Other insurers say they have no plans to follow their lead, including UnitedHealthcare.
A winter storm a year ago in the Midwest paralyzed blood exports to Alabama. For several weeks, local patients' access to the potential lifesaver was threatened because the state didn't receive other donations to boost the supply. That's when UAB Health System, the state's largest consumer of blood products, decided to take action. Since then, a task force has devised a strategy to increase local donations and to decrease the system's use of blood. UAB Hospital is the country's fourth-highest user of red blood cells.