When the Internal Revenue Service issued 131 pages of new rules last year governing 403(b) tax-deferred retirement plans, Judy Winslow didn’t have to understand all the nuances to know what it meant.
When Novation completed its shopping for CT and MRI equipment in September, the Irving, Texas-based group purchasing organization noticed some significant changes in how its member hospitals are buying such technology. Not only did the facilities...
If you want to make health insurers flinch, reach for their wallets. To prove the point, you need look no further than the Nov. 19 announcement by the health insurance lobby regarding pre-existing medical conditions. That was a big flinch, and those...
Catholic Health Initiatives, Denver, is postponing construction on a $150 million hospital in London, Ky., and putting several other projects on hold in response to the economic downturn. Although its capital allocations for fiscal 2009 have been...
The Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organizations division will continue to dig into not-for-profit governance and will deliver its previously promised follow-up report offering the IRS’ take on hospital community benefits and executive...
The CMS issued a paper that will help frame debate on transitioning Medicare physicians and other healthcare professionals to a value-based purchasing program. Under the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008, HHS is required...
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) asked the Government Accountability Office to identify “best practices” used by states, hospitals and other countries, to see if these methods could be...
President-elect Barack Obama said he would tie parts of his economic recovery package to modernizing healthcare and announced that a key figure in the cost-vs.-quality debate would lead his team of budget advisers. “This is not just a challenge, but...
When the Internal Revenue Service issued 131 pages of new rules last year governing 403(b) tax-deferred retirement plans, Judy Winslow didn’t have to understand all the nuances to know what it meant.
Medical-device makers and pharmaceutical companies continue to report plans to lay off workers, but healthcare industry experts said the job cuts are not necessarily a direct result of the current economic downturn.
On Jan. 1, a new Joint Commission standard will take effect that states hospital “leaders must address disruptive behavior,” and while the American Hospital Association is on record as supporting the measure, the American Medical Association thinks...
America’s Health Insurance Plans experienced a substantial increase in profits in 2007 over the prior year, according to its annual Internal Revenue Service Form 990, thanks to fatter government contracts and interest on savings and short-term...
The leveraged buyout boom is dead. But its ghost haunts the debt markets, thanks to a financial tool that gives dozens of companies the option to skip cash interest payments on more than $33 billion worth of junk bonds used to finance some of the...
Hospitals caught in one of the year’s earliest credit crises have emerged after months of further turmoil with fewer options for borrowing and little expectation that debt markets will resume lending as freely and cheaply as they did a year...
When Novation completed its shopping for CT and MRI equipment in September, the Irving, Texas-based group purchasing organization noticed some significant changes in how its member hospitals are buying such technology. Not only did the facilities...
Without state funding and a commitment to keep its current residency program intact, the struggling for-profit Oklahoma State University Medical Center is at risk of closure, according to Tulsa-area healthcare providers and government officials.
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Carolinas HealthCare System said it agreed to sell 15 medical office buildings in the Charlotte area to Healthcare Realty Trust, Nashville, for $162 million. Carolinas hopes to close the deal by year-end, said Greg Gombar,...
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif.—St. Joseph Health System last month won the bid on South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach, which Adventist Health put up for sale in September. Adventist Health will now enter into confidential negotiations with St.
FARMINGTON, Conn.—The University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, unveiled plans to partner with Hartford Healthcare to create a two-campus teaching hospital. Michael Hogan, the university’s president, said the partners hope to...
If you want to make health insurers flinch, reach for their wallets. To prove the point, you need look no further than the Nov. 19 announcement by the health insurance lobby regarding pre-existing medical conditions. That was a big flinch, and those...
On Aug. 13, 1946, in a watershed moment for healthcare in the U.S., President Harry Truman signed the Hospital Survey and Construction Act, better known as the Hill-Burton Act for its sponsors, Sens. Lister Hill of Alabama and Harold Burton of Ohio.
Regarding the Joint Commission’s guidelines on the “hospital of the future” (Daily Dose, Nov. 20), while this is a wonderful idea, I will not hold my breath. As a registered nurse with nearly 32 years of experience and a recent patient in a “magnet”...
The bad-debt history at Longmont (Colo.) United Hospital is one of perpetual growth. Since 2001, bad debt has grown from $4.1 million to $15.5 million for 2008. This is almost a 300% increase in just seven years. In the past year, bad debt has grown...
Dan Kennedy, president and CEO of Riddle Memorial Hospital, Media, Pa., will retire by January 2009. Kennedy, who was named CEO in 2001, joined Riddle Memorial in 1979. In a memo to staff, Kennedy, 60, said no successor has yet been named and...
The troubled economy may be slowing the pace of business for some medical-products companies, but that’s certainly not the case for blood-plasma centers across the country.
Oklahoma State Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland may have fumbled recently at a health insurance summit in Oklahoma City, but her remarks could end up producing some positive results.
Generally, medical news is not kind to baby boomers. For those who remember the ’60s and are now in their 60s, each year brings a few more pains and a few less working body parts. News reports are equally bleak with talk about there not being enough...
