Health systems’ strong revenue growth couldn’t prevent sagging operating margins in 2006, a Modern Healthcare survey found, a sign that the hospital sector’s recent strength might be ebbing.
The CMS will give Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in Los Angeles 23 days to clean up its act or lose Medicare certification. Michael Wilson, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, said the clock likely will...
Faculty physicians at academic medical centers are putting more hours into clinical practice to help medical schools keep up financially, while 10-year trends also show relatively flat increases in physician compensation.
Mississippi’s state medical board is the least effective at disciplining physicians and Alaska’s is the best, according to the Public Citizen Health Research Group’s annual state rankings released last week.
A bipartisan group in the House of Representatives is trying once again to get a bill through Congress that seeks to reform the medical liability system by placing caps on pain and suffering damages.
Less than one year after the CMS renewed a demonstration pay-for-performance project for another three years, a new study suggests it may not be working as hoped.
It’s a crapshoot as to whether the Senate Finance Committee will be able to get its act together and vote on a bill this week to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
The Business Roundtable is asking Congress, the Bush administration and a host of other healthcare stakeholders—including taxpaying citizens—to rally behind an 11-point platform that aims to expand health coverage, improve access and boost quality...
Physician entrepreneur David Brailer, the first national coordinator for health information technology, resigned as co-chairman of a key HHS policy advisory panel Friday, just four days after announcing a venture capital firm he formed had signed a...
Current and former lawmakers last week set out to do some old-fashioned arm-twisting in order to persuade Congress to consider, draft and then pass a comprehensive health information technology bill.
Economist Uwe Reinhardt, a corporate director to a cross section of healthcare companies, was named last week as an adviser to a privately held healthcare information technology business.
The Colorado Hospital Association has become the latest state association to launch a regional group purchasing program intended to provide value-added services, such as clinical and operational improvement programs, to its member hospitals.
Lawmakers skewered the Food and Drug Administration last week over its lax post-market surveillance of the diabetes drug Avandia, which independent studies indicate can increase the risk of heart attack in patients even while it effectively lowers...
The Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement—a group led by the American Medical Association—recently approved 10 new quality performance measures that their designers say could go a long way in helping physicians and hospitals improve...
Minnesota is typically in the “vanguard” when it comes to healthcare advances, says David Feinwachs, general counsel for the Minnesota Hospital Association, and the state recently took a couple of leaps forward in the area of electronic...
Health systems’ strong revenue growth couldn’t prevent sagging operating margins in 2006, a Modern Healthcare survey found, a sign that the hospital sector’s recent strength might be ebbing.
Too many years ago, when I was a reporter in the Illinois capital of Springfield, the governor and leading lawmakers concluded they needed to raise the state income tax. A prolonged economic recession and restrictive federal aid were bleeding the...
On May 18, the CMS issued a proposed regulation that would eliminate federal Medicaid matching payments for the costs of graduate medical education. If enacted, this regulation would severely and perhaps irrevocably compromise the ability of...
Your coverage of the New Jersey trustee law struck a responsive chord at my facility (“Getting schooled in governance,” May 28, p. 6). Two years ago, we began to alternate regular board meetings with board educational sessions on a monthly basis...
It seems almost contradictory but it’s true: Success can sometimes work against you. Talk to entrepreneurs and executives and many will tell you that success in any business can be a mixed blessing, as motivation suffers and direction is hard to...
Accolades have been accumulating for Spencer “Spike” Foreman, president of 1,002-bed Montefiore Medical Center in New York, who earlier this year announced he will be retiring after 20 years with the academic medical center.
MedCath Corp., Charlotte, N.C., said it has hired a new general counsel and also an executive to be in charge of its quality and compliance efforts. Blair Todt was named the company’s vice president and general counsel. Todt was associate...
Facing financial losses and yearning for independence, a 225-physician medical group owned by Lovelace Health System, Albuquerque, plans to spin off into a private practice, pending negotiations with the parent company.
The announcement of the resignation of David Colby as CFO of the nation’s largest insurer, WellPoint, on May 30 left a lot of questions. Colby, as the No. 2 officer at WellPoint, had been seen as a likely successor to Larry Glasscock, WellPoint’s...
