A merger that will bring an additional $240 million to the Manassas, VA-based Prince William Health System will probably be complete by summer's end, officials from the nonprofit health system said. The system, which plans to join Novant Health of North Carolina, is waiting for the Federal Trade Commission and the Virginia attorney general to sign off on the partnership, which officials said is needed to meet the demands of the fast-growing Prince William County.
Norman B. Goodman, chief executive of Signature Healthcare Brockton (MA) Hospital, is on leave from his job pending an investigation into "allegations of inappropriate behavior," according to the hospital's board of trustees. In a statement, the 17-member board did not disclose the nature of the allegations or say who was conducting the investigation.
Kaiser Permanente will become the next private healthcare organization to serve patients in San Francisco's universal healthcare program, helping to ease the burden on the financially strapped city clinics and San Francisco General Hospital. Kaiser expects to serve 3,000 Healthy San Francisco patients in its medical offices and hospital beginning July 1, joining a handful of other private hospitals and medical groups.
The Connecticut legislative session ended with no final action on a proposed plan for the future of the ailing University of Connecticut Health Center. The proposal called for merging the financially troubled Health Center with Hartford Hospital and building a new $475 million hospital in Farmington to replace John Dempsey Hospital. UConn and Hartford Hospital officials touted the plan as a way to bolster the region's economy, transform the healthcare landscape, and address persistent problems at the Health Center and at Dempsey Hospital. But the plan ran into fierce opposition.
The Louisiana House voted 94-2 for a proposal to block the acquisition of land for the proposed New Orleans teaching hospital until a key legislative budget panel approves a new financing plan. Critics of the hospital plans cast the bill as a common-sense way to protect private property. But state officials and Louisiana State University executives who run the state's public hospital system warn that it could delay an already lagging project.
Sixteen years after a similar proposal, there is a new plan to build a state-of-the art children's hospital in San Antonio. Doctors at the University of Texas Health Science Center have been promoting the benefits of a new facility, with supporters citing a dearth of pediatric specialists because they are lost to high-level children's hospitals in other cities. But Christus Santa Rosa Children's Hospital, the main pediatric teaching facility in the area, opposes the idea.
The Medical Board of California has withdrawn its complaint seeking to revoke or suspend the medical license of a San Francisco surgeon accused of trying to speed a potential organ donor's death. The surgeon, Hootan Roozrokh, MD, was also charged criminally in the case, which involved a failed attempt to acquire organs from a comatose 25-year-old patient who suffered from a wasting neurological condition. In December, jurors found Roozrokh not guilty of dependent adult abuse.
A study by Harvard University researchers that shows a sizable increase over six years in bankruptcies caused in part by ever-higher medical expenses. The study found that medical bills, plus related problems such as lost wages for the ill and their caregivers, contributed to 62% of all bankruptcies filed in 2007. About 78% of bankruptcy filers burdened by healthcare expenses were insured, according to the survey.
Patient falls and the injuries they cause are considered such a crisis that the federal government stopped paying hospitals for extra care if a fall is deemed preventable. Now, a Boston doctor is warning the pressure to keep patients from falling may lead to greater harm through the use of restraints. Sharon K. Inouye, MD, of Harvard Medical School argues that because falls have proved to be such an intractable problem despite broad efforts to reduce them, they should not be included on a list of avoidable medical errors that result in hospitals not being paid.
Marc Zubrow, MD, director of critical care medicine at Wilmington, DE-based Christiana Care Health System and medical director of the Maryland eCare project, shares strategies to improve the delivery of critical care and offers a preview of the upcoming HealthLeaders Media Webcast, ICU Overhaul 2009: Strategies to Reduce Cost and Improve Quality. For example, Christiana Care introduced sepsis resuscitation and critical care management standards that led to a 49% decrease in mortality rates and a 34% decrease in average length of stay in sepsis patients.
