President Obama's goal of remaking the healthcare system was always going to be difficult to reach, but the ailing economy has complicated his task. Obama is proposing a major expansion of the federal commitment to healthcare even though the government can barely afford the health insurance programs it has. The financial condition of Medicare is deteriorating because of the recession, and the Medicare trust fund could be depleted several years sooner than expected. But Obama hopes to turn the economic crisis to his advantage by citing the burden of health costs and the growing ranks of the uninsured, now at 46 million people, to justify a shake-up.
Virginia welcomed its first new hospital in more than 30 years when officials from MediCorp Health System opened Stafford Hospital Center. The $140 million, 100-bed hospital will serve Stafford and residents in southern Prince William County. The hospital offers inpatient and outpatient acute care. It has a full-service emergency department with 15 rooms, a family birthing center, a physical rehabilitation center, a pharmacy, a surgical wing, an intensive care unit, and a helipad.
Major changes to conflict-of-interest rules have been recommended by a task force of doctors and health professionals at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to banning doctors from giving promotional talks for drug companies, the group said, doctors should be required to disclose specific amounts of money they receive from drug and medical device firms. The task force acknowledged that financial relationships with industry companies can undermine patient trust and threaten the integrity of the medical profession.
In the first major expansion since Coral Springs (FL) Medical Center's inception, the size of the emergency room will increase from about 12,000 to 28,000 square feet. The expansion, which started in February, is expected to be completed by December 2010. Patrick Maloney, chief executive officer, said the expanded emergency room will be a tremendous asset for the community.
Rhode Island-based St. Joseph Health Services has announced that it is eliminating 36 positions and cutting pay for all of its non-union employees after losing about $3.4 million between October and December of last year. St. Joseph, which includes Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, in North Providence, and St. Joseph Hospital for Specialty Care, in Providence, has formally requested that all its union employees accept pay cuts, too. The pay cuts are 10% for senior management, 5% for middle management and 3% for all other employees.
State regulators say they want to bar Maryland hospitals from adding interest on unpaid bills at twice the rate allowed for other types of debts under the state constitution. Stephen Ports, principal deputy director of the Health Services Cost Review Commission, told the Senate Finance Committee that the agency's power to regulate hospitals could extend to how much the debt-collections firms they hire can charge in interest before a court judgment is entered against a patient who doesn't pay a bill. But Sen. Delores G. Kelley questioned whether the regulations would extend beyond hospitals to a "third party" such as a collection agency or a law firm.
North Carolina health officials have approved construction of a $264 million addition to Carolinas Medical Center-NorthEast in Concord. The project includes building an eight-story patient tower and adding a second floor to the hospital's surgery center, adding 424,950 square feet of space and renovating 79,140 square feet of existing space. The surgery center addition is scheduled to open in early 2011.
Three executives at Towson, MD-based St. Joseph Medical Center are on administrative leave to avoid a conflict of interest as federal authorities look into financial dealings between the hospital and an affiliated doctors' group, the hospital said. According to a statement released by the hospital, the federal Department of Health and Human Services contacted the hospital in June 2008 to request information "pertaining to a physician group and its financial relationship with the hospital." Hospital officials said they were cooperating with authorities in what they characterized as a "civil investigation" and said none of the issues relates to patient care.
Five private and community medical systems in the New Orleans area operated at a loss in 2008, with some losing even more than they had expected at the start of the year. The Metropolitan Hospital Council of New Orleans said that the combined operating deficits for West Jefferson Medical Center, East Jefferson General Hospital, Ochsner Health System, Touro Infirmary, and Tulane Medical Center will eclipse $120 million, and perhaps go higher once the medical facilities close the books on the year that ended Dec. 31.
The federal government is spending nearly $18 million to hook every Iowa hospital to fiber-optic communications networks, but there's no guarantee that the hospitals all will be able to talk to each other easily. The projects are part of a national push to increase the use of electronic medical records. Supporters say the networks will allow staff members at one hospital to rush medical scans and other vital patient records to their counterparts at a different hospital.
