Modern Healthcare articles from June 2006

Modern Healthcare archives from June 2006

Making it work; Steele has shown the power of interoperability.(Supplement)(Glenn Steele Jr)
June 5, 2006... Byline: Stephen Lieber The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society and our members congratulate Glenn Steele Jr., president and chief executive officer of Geisinger Health System, as the recipient of Modern Healthcare's 2006...

Charitable intentions; CHA, VHA unveil community-benefit guidelines developed to help not-for-profit hospitals justify their tax exemptions.(Catholic Health Association)(Voluntary Hospitals Association)
June 5, 2006... Byline: Cinda Becker As part of a groundbreaking demonstration project, St. Joseph Health System in Orange, Calif., has worked with the communities served by its 14 hospitals in Texas and California to install a traffic signal in an...

O'Leary's legacy; Exiting JCAHO president revamped surveys.(The Week In Healthcare)(Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations)(Dennis O'Leary )
June 5, 2006... Byline: Andis Robeznieks As the president of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, Dennis O'Leary can accurately be described as the physician in charge of making sure hospitals stay focused on quality...

'Beginning to see what a nurse is'; With baby boomers ready to pass the torch, ever-younger nurses learn the difference between schoolwork and real work.(Workforce Report 2006)
June 5, 2006... Byline: Melanie Evans Tania Gomez went from high school graduate to registered nurse in three years. Her employer, Florida Hospital in Orlando, wants to be sure she doesn't exit nursing just as quickly. There's reason to worry. Nursing...

Stop playing politics with charity; CHA's new community benefits measure merely a step in right direction.(Editorial)(Catholic Health Association )(Editorial)
June 5, 2006... Byline: David Burda "The debate over hospital charity care has been muddied at the national, regional and local levels by inconsistent definitions of charity care, conflicting requirements from government agencies and misleading data from...

Above and beyond; Steele out to prove IT produces quality and value.(Supplement)(Glenn Steele Jr.)(information technology)
June 5, 2006... Byline: Fawn Lopez According to a RAND Corp. study released in September 2005, the U.S would save $81 billion annually if healthcare providers broadly adopted a comprehensive medical-records system. The study found that medical-records...

Gain-sharing seems to be working, but ... ... research shows stent savings come from negotiations, not implementations.(Physician Affairs)
June 5, 2006... Byline: Joseph Mantone Hailed as the next great cost-cutting strategy, gain-sharing may turn out to be a long-term flop unless physicians can break their expensive habits, early results of the programs show. Most of the savings...

On the move...(appointments and resignations in health care industry)
June 5, 2006... HOSPITALS, SYSTEMS Allison Bayer has been promoted to senior vice president for operations and COO of Cambridge (Mass.) Health Alliance. Bayer, 50, had been the alliance's senior director for information-technology applications and...

Past CEO IT Achievement Award winners.(chief executive officers)(information technology)(Brief article)
June 5, 2006... Modern Healthcare and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society created the CEO IT Achievement Award in 2003. Since then, a total of nine chief executive officers have received the award. Previous winners are: 2003...

CMS gets online transparency; Payments to docs, hospitals will be shown by county.(Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services)
June 5, 2006... Byline: Matthew DoBias The nation's largest healthcare purchaser said last week it would start posting how much it pays hospitals and physicians for heart operations, hip and knee replacements and more than two dozen other procedures to...

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER; Leaving behind big-city living, Glenn Steele Jr. makes IT dreams a reality at small-town system.(Supplement)
June 5, 2006... Byline: Elizabeth Gardner What is Glenn Steele Jr.-a noted cancer researcher and oncology surgeon with a distinguished career at major medical centers in Boston and Chicago-doing in Danville, Pa., a place of lovely rolling hills in pretty...

Connecting patients, docs; Site offers medical data, physician access and more.(Supplement)(Geisinger Health System)
June 5, 2006... An elderly Pennsylvania woman vacationing in Maine found herself in need of emergency care. When an emergency room physician sat down to take her complex history and find out what medications she was on, she offered to log onto the Web and show...

The hazy doc shortage; There's a serious problem, but lack of clarity forestalls solutions.(Workforce Report 2006)
June 5, 2006... Byline: Michael Romano Despite mounting concern about a looming shortage of doctors, little has been done in recent years to boost medical school enrollment or increase government spending on the residency programs that train future...

Hospital stays of uninsured stable: AHRQ.(The Week In Healthcare)(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality )
June 5, 2006... Byline: Jennifer Lubell The percentage of uninsured patients hospitalized for care appears to be holding steady, yet the cost of providing care for these patients is going up, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has found. ...

Overlapping interests? Conflict questions arise at regional IT groups.(The Week In Healthcare)(information technolgy)
June 5, 2006... Byline: Joseph Conn Three of the nation's leading authorities on healthcare information technology also serve on the five-member board of a not-for-profit corporation that sells financial consulting services to regional health information...

Moving IT forward; Steele chosen from 70 nominees for this year's honor.(Supplement)(information technology)(Glenn Steele Jr)(Geisinger Health System)
June 5, 2006... Byline: David Burda Welcome to our fourth annual supplement profiling the winner or winners of the CEO IT Achievement Award, sponsored by Modern Healthcare and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. On the following...

FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT ON THE HEALTHCARE WORKFORCE.(Workforce Report 2006)(Brief article)
June 5, 2006... The U.S. is losing many of its technical jobs and other middle-class occupations to layoffs and outsourcing to foreign countries. Not so in healthcare, where good-paying, high-tech jobs go wanting and many employers look to foreign countries as...

Hustle up; Action-takers always outpace procrastinators.
June 5, 2006... Byline: Charles S. Lauer, Vice President-Publishing/Editorial Director The magic of hustle is apparent if you take the time to look around you. I'm not talking about the definition of hustle that suggests something was obtained through...

New York hospital tells everyone to pipe down to reduce stress.(Montefiore Medical Center )
June 5, 2006... At Montefiore Medical Center in New York, "shhh'' isn't just a request from some overzealous nurse, but an actual program to address the ever-present noise problem that exists in most hospitals. Elodia Mercier, an administrative nurse...

Other Voices.(insurance plan for doctors)(Brief article)
June 5, 2006... "Regence Blue Shield recently mailed letters to some 8,000 patients, informing them that their doctors would not be covered by a new Boeing Co. insurance plan.... Doctors object to the way Regence is measuring their performance on those...

Late News; Tax exempts under review.
June 5, 2006... Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked the Internal Revenue Service to comment on various problems regarding tax-exempt status and urged possible stepped-up enforcement to prevent abuses. Grassley specifically asked the...

Two CIOs serve on tech boards; Boston-based execs hope they can advance health IT.(John Glaser of SureScript Systems)(John Halamka of CareGroup Healthcare System )
June 5, 2006... Byline: Laura B. Benko Two prominent, Boston-based hospital executives have agreed to lend their expertise to the boards of healthcare technology firms with the hopes of driving patients and providers further into the Electronic Age. ...

Corrections & Clarifications.(Corrections)(Correction notice)
June 5, 2006... In "Specialty-hospital developers raring to go'' (May 29, p. 10), the location of Cirrus Health's California Heart and Surgical Hospital was listed incorrectly as Yorba Linda, Calif. The hospital, slated to open in November 2007, will be in...

Time's not on their side-yet; Researchers hope to optimize nurses' efficiency.
June 5, 2006... Byline: Melanie Evans Hospital nurses often spend roughly 10 seconds at any one location before moving on; during a 12-hour shift, they walk miles-as many as six-hunting for supplies, medicine or charts, early results from a national study...

Healthways gets bigger.(Selfcare Inc. to be acquired)
June 5, 2006... Byline: Laura B. Benko The disease-management sector continued to consolidate last week as two major vendors agreed to merge in a deal that creates a dominant provider of chronic-care services to both the commercial and government markets....

Award judges.(Brief article)
June 5, 2006... Modern Healthcare and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society would like to thank the following healthcare chief executive officers and chief information officers for serving as the judges for the 2006 CEO IT Achievement...

By The Numbers.(The Week In Healthcare)(Brief article)
June 5, 2006... By overwhelming margins, readers responding to a Modern Healthcare online poll gave failing marks to the government's rollout and implementation of the Medicare Part D prescription drug plan. More than 40% of readers graded the efforts an "F,"...

In good health, at least for now; Health systems report another strong year in 2005, but rising bad debt and concerns over reimbursement weigh on prognosis.(Special Feature)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Melanie Evans and Vince Galloro Health systems enjoyed strong financial gains in 2005 and healthcare analysts and executives agree the success should last-for a while, at least. Systems saw rising operating margins and a...

NRHA to launch fellows program.(The Week In Healthcare)(National Rural Health Association)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Jessica Zigmond Preparing strong leaders to advocate for rural health issues is the purpose of a new program created by the National Rural Health Association. Beginning in 2007, the NRHA-together with professional service firm...

A JCAHO for patients; O'Leary's departure opens door to its rebirth as a regulator without conflicts.(Editorial)(Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Neil McLaughlin, Managing Editor The Cosa Nostra is an interesting moniker for organized crime. Meaning "our thing'' or "our affair,'' it sums up the organization's purpose and its attitude toward outsiders. It would be an...

From hardship, true friendship; When life deals you a blow, you find out whom you can really count on.(Editorial)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Charles S. Lauer, Vice President-Publishing/Editorial Director Over the years I have experienced being with friends soon after they were fired. The scenario always seems to play out the same way. A person loses his job and enters a...

On the move...(appointments and resignations)(Brief article)
June 12, 2006... HOSPITALS, SYSTEMS Robert Kay, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic's Weston, Fla.-based hospital and clinic, has retired. Kay, 60, was chief of staff and vice chairman of the 11-hospital Cleveland Clinic before becoming CEO of the not-for-profit's...

Survey at root of CMS claim on Part D may be a myth.(management)
June 12, 2006... Late last month, a top Medicare official announced to the House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee that most pharmacies were being paid on a timely basis under the Part D prescription drug plan. "A recent CMS survey found that up to 18...

LifePoint takes good with bad; Four-hospital buy includes two it plans on reselling.(acquisitions)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Vince Galloro Practically every parent has struck a bargain like the one HCA agreed to last week with LifePoint Hospitals, a 1999 spinoff of HCA: Eat your vegetables, and you can have dessert. LifePoint, Brentwood, Tenn., will buy...

Fearless in Spartanburg; Small S.C. system's antitrust lawsuit against giant bedmaker ends 'bundling,' reaps $337 million in national settlement.
June 12, 2006... Byline: Michael Romano In late September of 2002, a jury in a federal antitrust trial in Texas ordered the Hill-Rom Co. to pay $173 million to competitor Kinetic Concepts, a San Antonio-based manufacturer of specialty hospital beds....

Looking for more time; Providers want longer wait before new PPS starts.(The Week In Healthcare)(hospital payment for inpatient care)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Jennifer Lubell Citing flawed data and potential financial repercussions to the healthcare industry, hospital groups and other organizations are pressing the CMS to delay major changes in the way it pays hospitals for inpatient...

Docs use more tech ... But many of them lack sophisticated systems.(survay of physicians)(Brief article)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Joseph Conn Physicians are using more healthcare information technology in their clinical practices, but in some cases the use may well be fairly rudimentary, such as looking up information about drugs and unfamiliar diseases on...

Late News; UHC president retiring in '07.(University HealthSystem Consortium)(Swedish Medical Center)(Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago)
June 12, 2006... University HealthSystem Consortium, Oak Brook, Ill., said Robert Baker, 62, the only president and chief executive officer in the organization's 22-year history, will retire in June 2007. Under Baker's leadership, UHC grew from a coalition of...

Other Voices.(Opinions)
June 12, 2006... "A staggering 26 million retired veterans last month learned that disks containing their personal data were stolen in a break-in at the residence of a Veterans Administration employee. (Earlier this month) the Buckeye Community Health Plan in...

Evidence-based prevention; New research finds big payoff in low-cost, pedestrian interventions.(Commentary)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Jack Ebeler Americans are living longer than ever before. New treatments promise patients with chronic conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer's and HIV/AIDS a better quality of life. The immense progress we have made treating chronic...

Brockovich takes on healthcare; Several lawsuits allege wrongful billing of Medicare.(The Week In Healthcare)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Laura B. Benko Famed environmental activist Erin Brockovich has a new cause-reforming the nation's healthcare system. The one-time legal assistant, whose crusade against Pacific Gas & Electric Co. inspired a 2000 hit movie...

Supreme Court turns down PBMs; Fight continues over disclosure of drug discounts.(The Week In Healthcare)(pharmacy benefit managers)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Joseph Mantone Much-maligned pharmacy benefits managers have fiercely fought regulation efforts, but they lost a battle last week when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule on a challenge to a Maine law that requires disclosure...

Ill. hire evokes FTC case.(News Makers)(Federal Trade Commission)(Brief article)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Mark Taylor An Evanston, Ill., hospital has hired an executive of an insurer that squealed on a rival hospital over its allegedly anticompetitive behavior. The executive is Jeffrey Murphy, 56, who served most recently as...

It's all up to the JCAHO; Outside groups won't determine O'Leary's successor.(The Week In Healthcare)(Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Andis Robeznieks The naming of a successor to Dennis O'Leary, president of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, won't be as simple as it was when he was appointed to that role in 1986. Unlike then,...

Citizens want more from care; Americans see differently on Bush healthcare policies.(The Week In Healthcare)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Matthew DoBias Washington insiders are closely watching how administration officials and key congressional leaders will respond to town hall meetings that indicate Americans reject some of Bush's core health policies. The...

Docs revive small hospital; By concentrating on imaging, owners put former county facility in the black.(Physician Affairs)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Jay Greene Carving out a new specialty-hospital niche for imaging and surgical services in a rural county of 50,000 people with two other hospitals, United Regional Medical Center is steadily turning around its operations by...

Making research pay; Reaping rewards, conflicts for developing drugs.(The Week In Healthcare)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Joseph Mantone Amidst conflicts-of-interest concerns, academic hospitals have been raking in royalty payments from drugs they helped develop. Just last week, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, became the latest to announce a...

CHA readies for revenue drop; Lowered fees a relief for members facing bad debt.(The Week In Healthcare)(Catholic Health Association)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Melanie Evans The Catholic Health Association will shave $1.1 million annually from its operations to offset a planned 10% cut in membership dues revenue. Stronger investment returns at the CHA and pressure on Roman Catholic...

It takes a community; Rural hospitals may have an edge in improving population health.(Rural Health)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Jessica Zigmond As the federal government pushes the healthcare industry to adopt pay-for-performance measures, rural hospitals could have an advantage over their urban counterparts in one area: working collaboratively to improve...

Corrections & Clarifications.(Corrections)
June 12, 2006... Joint Commission Resources is a not-for-profit subsidiary of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. A story in the June 5 issue (p. 8) described it as a for-profit consulting business.

By The Numbers.(The Week In Healthcare)(Brief article)
June 12, 2006... What should count toward community benefits? Half of the readers responding to an online poll conducted by Modern Healthcare would define the term broadly by including charity care, bad debt and shortfalls in Medicare and Medicaid payments.

Blues plot transparency; Distinction plan promises to improve level of care.(The Week In Healthcare)
June 12, 2006... Byline: Andis Robeznieks A new initiative from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association promises to offer an "unprecedented level of transparency'' that will result in engaging consumers to make better-informed healthcare decisions and...

Missiles, movies, healthcare... Hospital CFOs often bring wide-ranging backgrounds to their positions--experiences that can mean advantages as well as disadvantages.(chief financial officers)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Cinda Becker In 1988, after a globe-trotting, fortune-making career working at the highest echelons of companies involved in such eclectic ventures as Third World military training, car rentals, offshore oil drilling, airport...

100K Lives Campaign ends; IHI looks to follow up with a piggyback initiative.(The Week In Healthcare)(Institute for healthcare improvement)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Andis Robeznieks With the successful conclusion of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's 100,000 Lives Campaign last week, the organization has launched a new related initiative seeking wider use of the six interventions...

N.J. system settles lawsuit.(remedies of St. Barnabas Health Care System)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Mark Taylor St. Barnabas Health Care System's $265 million settlement last week with the U.S. Attorney in Newark is only the first of a number of pending whistle-blower and government investigations into hospitals inflating their...

IHI put under the scope ...(financial growth)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Andis Robeznieks While the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's efforts to promote wider use of medical best practices has led to apparent rapid gains in quality at U.S. hospitals and fast-paced financial growth for the...

The devil's in the dollars; Opposition to new DRGs, coding system based on financial winners, losers.(Diagnosis Related Groups )(Editorial)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Todd Sloane, Assistant Managing Editor/Op-Ed Ah, transparency! It's the word of the moment in healthcare, isn't it? Everybody's for it-at least until it involves some financial sacrifice. Then the picture turns opaque. The...

Other Voices.(health policy)(Brief article)
June 19, 2006... "Congress has failed on so many fronts that finding its biggest failure is quite a challenge. In this corner, the vote goes to healthcare. Congressional failure to control healthcare costs, to steady the rise in health insurance premiums and to...

Getting personal; Relationships take work, especially in the business world.(Lauer's Letter)(Letter to the editor)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Charles S. Lauer, Vice President-Publishing/Editorial Director I wish I could make more people aware of the importance of relationships. Many people just don't know how to be close with others. They are either shy, afraid of being...

Seton forms Texas HMO.(service introduction of health care industry)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Laura B. Benko Seton Healthcare Network is going against the industry grain by wading deeper into the insurance business-an area that hospital systems have been abandoning in droves. The Austin, Texas-based system is teaming up...

Carilion to be physician-run.(practice of Carilion Clinic Physicians)(Brief article)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Melanie Evans Seven-hospital Carilion Health System, Roanoke, Va., unveiled a plan to convert its operation to a physician-run clinic from a not-for-profit system as early as September. The move, unanimously approved by...

Survey to score hospital skills.(survey for hospital chief executive officers)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Melanie Evans Hospital directors, trustees and executives will soon be able to compare how well they're evaluating and training top managers and future leaders. The National Center for Healthcare Leadership will shortly launch...

The real price transparency; Providers must work to give consumers accurate reading of out-of-pocket costs.(consumer preferences)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Richard Clarke I believe consumerism-with its emphasis on engaging consumers in key healthcare decisions and giving providers the responsibility to provide information about quality and cost-may be the last, best hope for a market...

CHW settles, but who'll follow?(Catholic Healthcare West)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Mark Taylor Last week's settlement of a class-action lawsuit by San Francisco-based Catholic Healthcare West regarding its billing of the uninsured is unlikely to produce a groundswell of similar settlements, healthcare attorneys...

IOM asks Congress for $50 million; Groups say money won't solve bigger issues with care.(Institute of Medicine)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Jennifer Lubell Hospital groups contend that the Institute of Medicine's recommendation last week to increase funds for emergency care is too limited in scope to address the nation's larger healthcare issues. In a series of...

Leavitt: Getting hitched a path to mental, physical good health.(Outliers: Asides & Insides)
June 19, 2006... HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt last week dispensed with a little homespun medicine as he talked about the kind of near-cure-all that can't be found or even with a prescription. During a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington,...

AHA pushes CMS' button; Association rehashes opposition to self-referral.(American Hospital Association)(Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Matthew DoBias In a letter sent last week to CMS Administrator Mark McClellan, the American Hospital Association reiterated its opposition to physician self-referral ahead of a likely repeal of the current moratorium on new...

Former exec gets 8 years.(disipline of Hannibal Sonny Crumpler)(Brief article)
June 19, 2006... The former controller of HealthSouth Corp.'s outpatient division was sentenced to eight years in federal prison for his role in the multibillion-dollar accounting fraud at the company. Hannibal "Sonny'' Crumpler, 46, the outpatient division's...

AMA: Require insurance.(American Medical Association)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Michael Romano The American Medical Association waded into the debate over the uninsured last week, adopting a new policy that calls on Congress to require all Americans, rich or poor, to buy some form of basic health coverage....

Hill-Rom to pay $316 million.(The Week In Healthcare)(Spartanburg regional healthcare system case against Hill-Rom Co)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Michael Romano A federal judge in South Carolina last week approved a final settlement in Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System's class-action lawsuit against Hill-Rom Co., ordering the nation's largest manufacturer of hospital...

Doing a number on providers; Next looming deadline under HIPAA: a national provider identifier.(Information Edge)(Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Joseph Conn Though it's not an imminent problem, the compliance deadline for adoption of the national provider identifier-a numbering system required under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996-is now less...

... and so is the HFMA.(Healthcare Financial Management Association)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Cinda Becker The Healthcare Financial Management Association, the not-for-profit trade association for hospital chief financial officers, is heavily invested in healthcare and financial companies, according to Internal Revenue...

Triad venture brings challenge; New hospital faces big competition within Tenn.(The Week In Healthcare)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Vince Galloro Triad Hospitals has been the biggest proponent among investor-owned hospital chains of establishing joint ventures with not-for-profit systems (April 3, p. 6). Its latest such deal, reached last week with...

FATHER FIGURES; The progenitors of four major innovations assess their offspring.(healthcare industry)(Brief article)
June 19, 2006... Byline: David Burda, editor When you're a father, you can't help but be proud of your children. Even the smallest of a child's accomplishments like using a fork, catching a fish or reciting a poem can send a dad into a photo-snapping,...

HMO creator sees need for new model; Flawed law hurt HMOs: Ellwood.(health maintenance organization)(Paul Ellwood healthcare policy analyst)(Interview)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Laura B. Benko Modern Healthcare: At what point did you realize that you had 'fathered' a 'child' that could change the healthcare industry? Paul Ellwood: First let me deny fathering the HMO child. My ideas for the HMO...

'You just keep yourself in position'; Adaptability fuels HCA's growth: Frist.(Hospital Corporation of America)(Thomas F. Frist Jr.)(Interview)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Vince Galloro Modern Healthcare: At what point did you realize that you had 'fathered' a 'child' that could change the healthcare industry? Thomas Frist Jr.: The idea came about in 1968. So we moved from that time forward and...

HSA architect sees more opportunities; Benefits expected for chronically ill.(health savings account)(Interview)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Matthew DoBias Modern Healthcare: At what point did you realize that you had 'fathered' a 'child' that could change the healthcare industry? John Goodman: I first went to Capitol Hill to propose the idea of a savings account...

Putting safety on the front line; 'The culture is beginning to change'.(Interview)
June 19, 2006... Byline: Andis Robeznieks Modern Healthcare: At what point did you realize that you had 'fathered' a 'child' that could change the healthcare industry? Lucian Leape: I didn't know whether it was going to be a movement or a (medical)...

By The Numbers.(The Week In Healthcare)(Brief article)
June 19, 2006... Women, blacks and low-income individuals are the least likely of Medicare recipients to seek preventive healthcare services, even though they are available in the program, according to a recently published study by Thomson Medstat. The...

Rebuilding Healthcare In Louisiana - A Blueprint for the Nation.(Straight Talk)(Discussion)
June 19, 2006... When Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana last August, it ravaged the healthcare system, which has since been struggling to cope with day-to-day challenges while also preparing for the future. The The Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) has been...

In the spotlight.(News Makers)
June 19, 2006... * Kathleen Kinslow has been named the first female chief executive of one of the nation's first hospitals. Kinslow, 50, was named executive director of Pennsylvania Hospital, which was founded in 1751 by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Bond. ...

REVIVAL OF THE FITTEST; PHOs have dropped in number, but many are still going strong despite antitrust scrutiny-and there's even renewed interest.(Special Report)(physician hospital organizations)
June 26, 2006... Byline: Mark Taylor Don't classify them with the dinosaurs just yet. Industry observers caution that while one reportedly endangered species-physician-hospital organizations-has been rocked by changing market conditions, growing...

Running in syndication; Docs find investment stake in hospitals is great benefit.(The Week In Healthcare)(Triad hospitals acquires Quorum health group)
June 26, 2006... Byline: Vince Galloro For investor-owned hospital companies, the strategy of offering physicians an investment stake in the companies' hospitals followed the trajectory of the former Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. Columbia/HCA is widely...

He's baaack. Scully affidavit gives Tenet credit on outliers.(Outliers: Asides & Insides)(Tenet Healthcare Corp's lawsuit)
June 26, 2006... A document obtained by Outliers opens a Pandora's box worth of questions about... outliers. The affidavit, which seems to back Tenet Healthcare Corp. in its huge legal fight with the U.S. Justice Department over excess outlier payments,...