Modern Healthcare congratulates the winners and honorable mentions of the 16th annual Spirit of Excellence Awards, co-sponsored by Sodexo Health Care Services. This year’s winners and runners-up are profiled on the following pages. Each of...
President-elect Barack Obama’s official selection of Tom Daschle as his head of HHS along with Obama’s plans to create a new White House Office of Health Reform was generally hailed by industry executives and healthcare policy shapers.
Next year will mark the 10th anniversary of To Err is Human, the Institute of Medicine’s sobering tally of the human cost attributable to errors committed in America’s hospitals and a look at the safety shortcomings of the healthcare sector...
Former Los Angeles hospital executive Rudra Sabaratnam pleaded guilty to paying kickbacks for homeless people recruited as patients at 150-bed City of Angels Medical Center in a scam to defraud Medicare and Medicaid, the U.S. attorney there...
Medicare Advantage plans earned approximately $1.3 billion more in profits in 2006 than projected, according to the Government Accountability Office. In comparing the private plans’ projected spending on medical care and profit margins with their...
A deal was halted that would have had Hospital Sisters Health System, Springfield, Ill., acquiring St. Anthony’s Health System and its two-campus, 191-bed hospital in Alton, Ill., St. Anthony’s Health Center. As a result, St. Anthony’s officials...
The Institute of Medicine in a new report said HHS should streamline its decisionmaking process and embrace a more modern way of operating to help guide the nation’s healthcare needs. The IOM found that HHS “has a staggering range of...
The Internal Revenue Service granted a reprieve to not-for-profit hospitals worried about complying with complicated documentation requirements for 403(b) tax-deferred retirement plans that were scheduled to be enforced beginning Jan. 1, 2009. In a...
President-elect Barack Obama’s official selection of Tom Daschle as his head of HHS along with Obama’s plans to create a new White House Office of Health Reform was generally hailed by industry executives and healthcare policy shapers.
As President-elect Barack Obama introduced former Sen. Tom Daschle as his pick for HHS secretary, the nation’s mind was on another man who federal prosecutors say dreamed up a scheme to get the job by granting Obama a favor.
Participants in the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 5 Million Lives Campaign were not disappointed when the program concluded without a firm estimate of the degree to which it reduced incidents of harm in hospitals nationwide, but other...
Both President George W. Bush and President-elect Barack Obama assigned healthcare information technology a key role in the movement to reform healthcare, but one increasingly missing participant may be hospital-based healthcare providers...
Officials for the nation’s emergency departments last week called on the government to provide more resources to help prevent overcrowding, yet some experts argue that additional quality measures need to be developed to fully improve emergency...
Six leading healthcare executives are jumping on the bandwagon of healthcare reform in a more formal way by creating an organization that aims to work closely with lawmakers on specific policy goals.
The Physician Quality Reporting Initiative was meant to encourage doctors to practice better medicine, yet CMS officials at a meeting last week heard that they needed to infuse more transparency into the program.
The Massachusetts Public Health Council last week issued draft regulations for what many healthcare experts believe could become the most stringent physician-payment disclosure law in the country. But some observers say despite the proposed rules’...
At Kaiser Permanente’s Sidney R. Garfield Health Care Innovation Center, tucked away in a nondescript office park in San Leandro, Calif., Lonny Brooks was talking about the future on a recent sunny morning.
Next year will mark the 10th anniversary of To Err is Human, the Institute of Medicine’s sobering tally of the human cost attributable to errors committed in America’s hospitals and a look at the safety shortcomings of the healthcare sector...
Why would a major health system such as Akron (Ohio) General Health System oppose a new hospital in another part of Summit County—a 100-bed, for-profit facility with physician ownership that promises healthcare and jobs for the areas involved?
While modern medicine is dependent upon precision instruments like scalpels and lasers, too much of the debate over healthcare reform is still rooted in the politics of the meat cleaver. Rather than rewarding innovation while penalizing...
Yet another sad day (“Feds say Ill. governor tried to leverage his position for top HHS post,” Daily Dose, Dec. 9). I now contend that anyone who wants to run for political office truly believes it is the path to personal economic...
One of the chief financial goals of the healthcare industry is to reduce insurance and claims-related costs. The industry is paying much more in malpractice premiums today than five years ago and, although the number of annual claims has decreased,...
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, Winston-Salem, N.C., made several appointments, effective Dec. 1, that continue the leadership changes at the consolidated medical school and health system. Donny Lambeth, 58, was named president...
Mercy Medical, Daphne, Ala., named Jake Bell president and CEO. Bell, 33, takes over the facility on Jan. 5, 2009. He was named to the role at Mercy Medical after a six-month executive search, the company said in a news release. Mercy is part...
Integrated Healthcare Holdings launched itself by buying four hospitals from Tenet Healthcare Corp., and now a former Tenet executive has become Integrated’s new chief executive officer. Integrated, Santa Ana, Calif., hired Kenneth Westbrook,...
Hermann Requardt took over as CEO of Siemens Healthcare following the resignation of Jim Reid-Anderson, who led the division for seven months. Requardt, 53, will also retain his chief technology officer position with the company, a...
The National Patient Advocate Foundation, Washington, named Grayson Fowler, 56, its vice president of federal legislative affairs. Fowler most recently spent nine years as director of federal relations for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids,...
The College of American Pathologists would like people to be more aware of the laboratory’s role in patient-centered care, and they’re using the culmination of the popular TV show “ER” to help get the word out.
With the recession slamming workers everywhere, it warmed Outliers’ heart to read about a bigwig taking a pay cut. Last week, a securities filing revealed that William Schoen, founder and nonexecutive chairman of Health Management Associates, was...
Plastic surgery and vacations at expensive resorts were among the lavish perks that prosecutors in West Palm Beach, Fla., say a former healthcare executive awarded herself using $3.2 million she embezzled from a physician group.
