A year before Boston Medical Center reported its first loss in five years, the hospital paid Chief Executive Elaine Ullian $3.5 million in deferred compensation on top of her $1.35 million salary and benefits, according to a recent filing with the Massachusetts attorney general's office. Ullian, who announced her resignation when her contract ends in January, received the additional compensation last year, a time when the hospital reported $56 million in profitable earnings. But the hospital has said it expects to lose $38 million by the end of this fiscal year and projects it will lose an additional $175 million next fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1, an 18% operating loss.
A national health bill released by Democratic Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus includes a proposal from Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa to "improve the community service, transparency and billing practices of nonprofit hospitals." The legislation also would require hospitals to adopt and "widely publicize" written financial assistance policies, which are now largely voluntary. Grassley has also raised questions about hospital missions, looking at tax exemptions and floating ideas about mandating levels of charity care.
A proposed amendment to the healthcare bill now before the Finance Committee would help out the Nevada Cancer Institute. The proposal would provide more favorable Medicare payment rates to just a handful of specific medical facilities. Three of them—a hospital under construction in Cleveland, a center in Detroit and, apparently, another in New Jersey—are among some 40 "comprehensive cancer centers" that have received grants with that designation from the government's National Cancer Institute.
Commercial real estate firm Marcus & Millichap predicts that there could be demand for at least another 10 million square feet of medical space nationwide—mostly from primary care doctors—in the first few years following changes in the country's healthcare system. The real estate firm didn't break down its forecast by state or metro area, but key to the calculations were how reforms would increase doctor visits by aging baby boomers.
Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. has announced changes in the way it pays for physician-training sessions and other practices that industry critics have derided as too cozy with the medical community.
Starting next year, the company will pay only academic, medical, and professional institutions to organize continuing medical-education sessions for physicians. Glaxo is immediately ending its practice of paying event producers or other commercial providers to organize sessions.
Nurses and allied professionals at Philadelphia-based Temple University Hospital are threatening a three-day strike in October if there's no new contract by Sept. 30, when their current agreement expires. The two big issues so far are healthcare and education benefits, said Bill Cruice, executive director of Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents 1,500 Temple workers.
The three major health systems serving Camden, NJ, are joining with local doctors to share health records of patients who give their permission. Cooper University Hospital, Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, and Virtua Health—normally fierce competitors—plan to join with most primary-care providers in the city oto create an exchange giving doctors access to such records as hospital discharge summaries, lab results, medications, and X-rays.
A Miami cosmetician is set to appear in federal courton charges of buying confidential patient records from a Jackson Memorial Hospital employee and selling them to a lawyer suspected of soliciting the patients to file personal-injury claims. Maria Victoria Suarez was added to an indictment that charges her and husband Ruben E. Rodriguez with paying a JMH ultrasound technician $1,000 a month for the hospital records of hundreds of patients, federal authorities said.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched an investigation into Humana Inc.'s effort to enlist beneficiaries to fight proposed cuts to Medicare's private plans. The investigation is looking at whether Humana, one of the largest providers of Medicare Advantage plans, violated marketing rules by sending letters to beneficiaries urging them to contact lawmakers to register their opposition to proposed cuts.
With its many uninsured citizens and its relatively low life expectancy, the United States has been relegated to the bottom of international health scorecards, notes this article in the New York Times. But a prominent researcher has found no evidence that America's healthcare system is to blame for the longevity gap between it and other industrialized countries. Instead, the American system in many ways provides superior treatment even when uninsured Americans are included in the analysis, according to the findings.
