President Obama will seek to rally Congress to pass healthcare reform in a prime-time address today, as lawmakers continue struggling to reach broad consensus on some of the toughest issues in the debate. Obama discussed his address at length with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid at the White House. Reid said that the president's goal is "to reenergize the way to do healthcare reform" while clearing up "ridiculous falsehoods" repeated at hundreds of town hall meetings by opponents of the Democratic-led effort.
Six months after agreeing to pursue a broad-based affiliation with Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, MA, has decided to scrap the plan. The move reflects the ambivalence of some suburban hospitals about aligning with Boston's teaching hospitals at a time of general industry consolidation. Such ties give smaller hospitals access to specialists and advanced clinical programs, but also can mean a loss of independence as large hospitals seek to impose their own practices on smaller partners, according to the Boston Globe.
Atlanta-based Grady Memorial Hospital plans to spend $12 million to expand and modernize the emergency room and trauma unit. The majority of the work is aimed at relocating the trauma unit apart from the emergency room. The trauma unit will expand from four to six bays, said Grady spokesman Matt Gove. Emergency crews now rush trauma victims through the emergency room area to reach the trauma unit, which can hamper work for both services. The trauma unit can also become cramped during busy times, Gove told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The government won't save much from Medicare's year-old policy of refusing to pay hospitals' extra costs to treat hospital-acquired infections and injuries such as bedsores, a new study concludes. Medicare adopted the policy last year with the goal of saving lives and cutting costs. Medicare stopped paying the extra costs of treating 10 hospital injuries and infections beginning Oct. 1, 2008. The study by California researchers examined California discharge data for Medicare beneficiaries in 2006, looking for six conditions the authors deemed "definable." They found that out of 767,995 cases in all, 828 cases involved those conditions, and only 26 of the cases would have been subject to lower payments.
Nearly half of Americans have a chronic condition, and 75% of the $2.6 trillion spent annually on healthcare goes to treat patients with long-term health problems, says Kenneth Thorpe, a professor at Atlanta's Emory University and head of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease. In the Medicare program, 95% of spending is linked to a chronic disease.
Las Vegas-based Spring Valley Hospital Medical Center has begun handling patients at a new top-level neonatal intensive care unit and an expanded special care nursery. Hospital spokeswoman Naomi Jones says certification for the 18-bed NICU came from the Nevada Department of Health & Human Services on Aug. 26. The hospital joins several others in its region with Level III intensive care units for premature and special-needs newborns.
California's 800 community clinics and health centers have reported on average a 50% increase in newly uninsured patients this year, according to the California Primary Care Association. But despite some federal stimulus funding, the increased patient load is straining the already struggling safety net, which include California's 19 public hospitals. State and local budget cuts have reduced public funding, while free clinics have reported dramatic declines in donations.
A Dana-Farber Cancer Institute fund-raising campaign has hit the $1 billion mark a year earlier than expected, setting what is believed to be a record for New England healthcare institutions. Half the money is being used for research and patient care, and about $200 million is going to new technology and construction of a new building.
The national debate on the healthcare overhaul has centered on a wide range of proposals in Congress, only some of which will end up in the final bill, notes the Wall Street Journal. Increasingly, though, the contours of the overhaul are becoming clearer, and are certain to sharpen when President Obama addresses Congress in a special joint session, according to the Journal.
Within the battle over President Obama's healthcare overhaul, critics of organized labor have latched onto a little-noticed provision that would cost $10 billion in federal money to subsidize employer-sponsored health plans covering early retirees, as a bridge to Medicare. Labor's critics assert that the provision, aimed at retirees ages 55 to 64, is a Democratic payback to unions and would further drive up the federal deficit.
