The impending national discussion about broadening access to healthcare, improving medical practice, and saving money is giving a group of scientists an opening to propose shutting down the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. Critics of alternative medicine say the vast majority of studies of homeopathy, acupuncture, therapeutic touch, and other treatments based on unconventional understandings of physiology and disease have shown little or no effect. Further, they argue that the field's more-plausible interventions can be studied just as well in other parts of NIH, where they would need to compete head-to-head with conventional research projects.
When it comes to today's job market, healthcare isn't a bad industry to be in. But that doesn't mean CEOs or any other senior executives should be sitting too comfortably. +
David Neikrug, chief executive officer of Optimatum Group LLC, talks about how companies are managing to cut their healthcare costs in ways that don't involve shifting costs directly onto employees. +
Broward Health's North Broward Medical Center has named Bruce E. Janke, MD, medical director of its newly opened Joint Replacement Center. Janke played a vital role in the process of attaining Joint Commission Certification for hip and knee replacement at NBMC, the first and only hospital in Broward County, FL, to achieve this certification. The new Joint Replacement Center features private patient rooms, family centered patient education, group therapy, and the latest advances in joint replacement surgery.
Caritas Holy Family Hospital in Methuen, MA, will have a new president effective May 4. Lester P. Schindel, most recently president of New England Sinai Hospital in Boston, will succeed Tom Sager, who will take over a newly created position as executive director of the Holy Family Foundation, and vice president of Caritas Christi Health Care Development. Sager, of Haverhill, officially takes on the new job June 12. Sager will remain on for about three months at the hospital to help Schindel with the transition.
Roger Seaver, president and CEO of Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Valencia, has been named chairman of the Hospital Association of Southern California HASC for 2009. Seaver was named president and CEO of Henry Mayo in 2001 after being brought in as a consultant to assist the financially troubled hospital.
LifePoint Hospitals, Inc. has named Jeffrey Sherman, 43, executive vice president and CFO. Sherman, currently vice president and treasurer at Tenet Healthcare, will succeed David M. Dill who, as planned, will become the LifePoint's executive vice president and COO. Sherman and Dill will report directly to William F. Carpenter III, president and CEO.
David Benn, the chief hospital executive for Sutter Health in the Northern San Joaquin Valley in California, has a new position overseeing the three Sutter hospitals and physician organizations in the region. In addition to serving as CEO for Memorial Medical Center, Benn has been responsible for coordinating services with Sutter Tracy Community Hospital and Memorial Hospital Los Banos. He now oversees the hospitals and the Sutter Gould Medical Foundation, which has medical offices in Stanislaus, San Joaquin and Merced counties. A new CEO will be hired at Memorial in Modesto.
Susan D. DeVore has been named president and CEO of the Premier healthcare alliance. She and current CEO Rick Norling are coordinating the transition process. DeVore is currently Premier's COO. Before joining Premier, DeVore spent more than 20 years with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young as a senior healthcare industry management practice leader and member of the executive committee for the North American consulting organization.
The United States faces a critical lack of nurses in every corner of the nation. The U.S. Labor Department reports that the nation has an immediate shortage of 126,000 nurses. By some estimates, that shortage will grow to 500,000 nurses in seven years. Yet, it has never been more difficult than now for foreign-born nurses to get green cards.
"Right now it's looking like a little more than six years. That has got to be a record," says Carl Shusterman, an immigration lawyer in Los Angeles. "In the 30-something years I've practice immigration law it's never been that long."
Shusterman cites a March 9 visa bulletin from the U.S. State Department that lists waiting times for various categories of immigrants. As of April 1, 2009, the bulletin states, green card processing times for nurses and other immigrants in the EB-3 visa category will increase from four years to more than six years.
This is particularly tough news for the healthcare sector because—unlike just about every other sector of skilled labor—there is no temporary visa category for nurses. Hospitals and other healthcare entities have to apply directly for the green card on the nurses' behalf, and the six-year wait begins, even for nurses who've been educated at U.S. nursing schools.
Aileen Lange, manager of recruitment at White Memorial Medical Center, an Adventist hospital in East Los Angeles, says the 350-bed hospital needs help, but has stopped petitioning for foreign-born nurses because the wait is too long. "It's very painful for us," Lange says. "We really try to find as many nurses locally from our various schools, and schools associated with this hospital and through our religious affiliation. We go to regular job fairs. We go everywhere. It's become such a competitive environment that nurses will change hospitals for a little bit more money. We find the foreign nurses are a little more loyal."
White Memorial has about 700 RNs on staff or serving in other capacities and has about 20 vacancies to fill right now. To comply with California's strict staffing ratios, and with nowhere else to turn, White Memorial has hired temporary nurses.
"It's not that they're bad nurses, but they don't have the same commitment. They also make a tremendous amount more money and that causes a lot of dissention among the staff," Lange says. In addition, temporary nurses are a temporary fix. "It's like putting your finger in a dam. If fixes it for a moment but doesn't solve the problem," she says.
The nurse shortage is a problem recognized throughout healthcare. Nearly nine out of ten (88%) respondents to the HealthLeaders Media Industry Survey 2009 say that the nurse shortage would have a negative impact on their organization in the next three years.
So why is it so hard to bring in foreign-born nurses?
Shusterman blames the nurses unions, specifically the Service Employees International Union.
"The nurse unions really don't want any foreign nurses here," he says. "When it comes to non-nurses, they do back flips and say the immigration laws are too harsh. They want to organize illegal workers, and I'm all for that. But here we are trying to do it the legal way and they are against it. I don't know why nurses are different from everybody else they want to organize."
Calls to SEIU's Washington office seeking comment on the issue were not returned.
President Obama, a strong supporter of organized labor, at a healthcare summit this month in the White House, said recruiting foreign-born nurses "makes absolutely no sense."
Instead, Obama said the nation should be focusing on creating more nurse training programs to fill the void. "That's something that we've got to fix. That should be a bipartisan no-brainer, to make sure that we've got the best possible nursing staffs in the country," Obama told the gathering.
Shusterman, who regards himself as pro-union, who voted for Obama, donated money and worked for his presidential campaign, says the president and the unions are simply wrong. "The idea that they are going to get all these people in nursing schools and graduated to fill these vacancies to solve this problem in our lifetimes is fantasy land," he says. "We need every possible source. The president is just being informed by the nurse unions who don't want nurses to come here, which is a shame."
Far from posing a threat to organized labor, Shusterman says, foreign-born nurses would join unions and increase their membership, which would also address the unions' constant carping over staffing ratios.
"We've got about 90,000 people dying needlessly in hospitals every year and part of that is because there aren't enough nurses," he says. "I thought patients' needs were supposed to come before nurses' salaries. The only people getting hurt by the current system are American patients."
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David Neikrug, chief executive officer of Optimatum Group LLC, talks about how companies are managing to cut their healthcare costs in ways that don't involve shifting costs directly onto employees.
