For months, the cost and availability of healthcare were daily fodder in the debate over which Democratic candidate would do a better job as president. But now healthcare has taken a backseat to the economy, the price of gas, and the war in Iraq as the top issues in the Presidential campaign.
The Washington Health Department has approved the sale of two Spokane hospitals to Franklin, TN-based Community Health Systems. The not-for-profit Empire Health Services is selling Deaconess Medical Center and Valley Hospital and Medical Center for $272 million. They have a total of 511 acute-care beds and treat more than 225,000 patients a year.
California officials are planning to appeal a federal judge's decision that blocked 10% cuts in Medi-Cal fees to doctors, pharmacists and other medical professionals. The 10% reductions took effect in July to a large network of doctors, dentists, pharmacists, adult day health centers, and others in the healthcare system. Some 6.6 million low-income people receive Medi-Cal.
The University of New Mexico's new Center for Life offers what officials call "complementary medicine" that augments modern medicine with practices and treatments that may go back thousands of years in other cultures. The philosophy has its basis in preventing disease, says Arti Prasad, MD, the center's director. The center's physicians work with yoga instructors, doctors of Oriental medicine, or hypnotherapists when treating patients.
A new economic analysis shows that the HPV vaccine could be a good financial investment in public health if given to preadolescent girls and women up to age 21. Authors of the study measured the Gardasil vaccine's value by calculating the cost of giving one person an extra healthy year of life and balancing the expense of vaccinations with the benefits of avoiding cancer, death, and related expenses.
Doctors who diagnose people with terminal illnesses would be required to immediately tell them about the right to refuse or withdraw from life-sustaining treatment under a measure approved by California lawmakers. The right-to-die legislation would require a doctor at the time of a terminal diagnosis to explain all options, when requested by the patient. But some say physicians who treat cancer patients oppose the latest bill because they see it as government meddling at a time when patients need compassion.
Two months after Philadelphia's Fox Chase Cancer Center said it was considering a second campus in northern Delaware, the University of Pennsylvania Health System has announced its first foothold in the state. Penn has a new partnership with Bayhealth Medical Center that will link patients there to experts and clinical trials at Penn, a National Cancer Institute comprehensive cancer center. Penn has similar relationships with nine health systems in Pennsylvania and seven in New Jersey.
A Mexican man in a coma at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago has ignited a dispute over hospitals sending medically needy undocumented immigrants back to their countries of origin. Francisco Pantaleon suffered a severe brain hemorrhage in mid-July, according to his sister Socorro. Pantaleon worked at a carwash and has no health insurance, she said. The medical center believes there is "little hope for recovery," according to a statement, and officials arranged for Pantaleon to be transferred to a hospital in Acapulco at UIC's expense. But members of Pantaleon's family are protesting that arrangement and have retained lawyers in hopes of preventing it.
Wareham, MA-based Tobey Hospital recently opened a $1 million ExpressCare unit, with a goal to get noncritical emergency patients in, treated, and discharged within an hour. The 70-bed hospital's emergency room usage has grown by 40% in the past 10 years, say hospital representatives. In 2007, Tobey had 28,000 emergency room visits, and this year is averaging 100 a day.
When most patients go to the pharmacy to fill a new prescription, they don't think twice about turning over the note from their doctor. But to the world's largest drug makers, the information is an invaluable sales tool that they use to track what drugs individual doctors are prescribing. Companies like IMS Health Inc., have built an industry around gathering prescription data and selling the information to pharmaceutical companies for millions of dollars each year. But now such companies are fighting laws in three New England states to keep prescribing information out of their hands.
