Rebecca Vesely October 05, 2009 Providers nationwide are under strain as state Medicaid programs cut reimbursement rates and benefits during the worst economic recession in decades. ... FULL STORY
Joseph Conn October 05, 2009 For more than two decades, speech-recognition software has held bright promise for busy physicians looking for a better way to get what was in their heads onto a printed page or into a computerized health record. ... FULL STORY
Neil McLaughlin October 05, 2009 Spring 1961—President John F. Kennedy tells Congress the U.S. should set a goal of putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth by the end of the decade. ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), a physician, has proposed a bill that calls for ending the use of the sustainable growth-rate formula to set Medicare payments to physicians and replacing it with a new formula linked to the Medicare Economic Index. Called the Ensuring the Future Physician Workforce... ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 Eighteen Washington state hospitals failed to persuade a federal judge that Medicare owes them about $31 million in disproportionate-share hospital funds. Echoing similar cases in Ohio and Arizona with the same outcome, the hospitals sued HHS over its interpretation of a provision in the Social... ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 Accretive Health, a revenue-cycle technology company partially owned by the nation’s largest Catholic health system, alerted regulators that it is preparing for a public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. Ascension Health, St. Louis, launched a venture capital subsidiary in 2001 and... ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 The healthcare workforce continued to live in a world apart from the wider economy in September, adding an estimated 19,200 jobs while unemployment in the economy as a whole pushed to a 26-year high, at 9.8%. Healthcare as an industry has not recorded an overall decline in jobs since the start of... ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 TriStar Health System, which is owned by Nashville-based HCA, said that it will not appeal a state court decision that overturned its certificate-of-need approval to build a 56-bed hospital in Spring Hill, Tenn., which is about 35 miles south of Nashville. An appeal of the Davidson County Chancery... ... FULL STORY
Rebecca Vesely October 05, 2009 Providers nationwide are under strain as state Medicaid programs cut reimbursement rates and benefits during the worst economic recession in decades. ... FULL STORY
Matthew DoBias October 05, 2009 The Senate Finance Committee pushed into its eighth day of negotiations—one of the longest negotiations in its history according to its chairman—before lawmakers ultimately emerged with a health reform package that garnered praise by Democrats even while potentially locking out any... ... FULL STORY
Jennifer Lubell October 05, 2009 Taxing more generous healthcare plans as a means to pay for costly healthcare legislation pending in Congress is generating widespread skepticism not just on Capitol Hill, but in the provider industry as well. ... FULL STORY
Gregg Blesch October 05, 2009 Federal investigators have been contacting hospitals across the country in a False Claims Act investigation that so far has netted more than $10 million from seven settlements. That’s likely just the beginning. ... FULL STORY
Melanie Evans October 05, 2009 Boston Medical Center, the safety net hospital that sued Massachusetts in July over state-subsidized care, has seen its operating losses grow and cash reserves shrink, prompting one rating agency to lower the hospital’s credit rating last week. ... FULL STORY
Andis Robeznieks October 05, 2009 Hospitalists, a branch of internal medicine that has become one of healthcare’s fastest growing and most in-demand specialties, will at last be getting the recognition it deserves. Sort of. ... FULL STORY
Joseph Conn October 05, 2009 In another example of a hardware manufacturer buying an information services provider, Xerox Corp. last week announced it would acquire Affiliated Computer Services with a cash and stock offer that the companies are valuing at $6.4 billion. ... FULL STORY
Joe Carlson October 05, 2009 In a legal victory for hospitals facing an antitrust lawsuit from 19,000 Chicago-area nurses, a federal judge has denied the workers class-action status. The judge said their arguments rested on a shoddy theory that the alleged anti-competitive activity by the hospitals affected all the workers... ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 Nominations are now being accepted for Modern Healthcare's 2010 Trustee of the Year competition. The awards, co-sponsored by executive search firm Witt/Kieffer, honor outstanding trustees for their contributions to healthcare governance. ... FULL STORY
Melanie Evans October 05, 2009 For healthcare borrowers that finance construction and expensive technology with municipal bonds, upheaval from the credit crisis threatened lasting changes to the market. But another disruption—less volatile, but perhaps more fundamental—was simultaneously under way. ... FULL STORY
Joseph Conn October 05, 2009 For more than two decades, speech-recognition software has held bright promise for busy physicians looking for a better way to get what was in their heads onto a printed page or into a computerized health record. ... FULL STORY
Neil McLaughlin October 05, 2009 Spring 1961—President John F. Kennedy tells Congress the U.S. should set a goal of putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth by the end of the decade. ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 “If there’s anything in the medical system that’s ripe for cutbacks, it’s the wasteful subsidies in Medicare Advantage, which is projected to spend some $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years. … Seniors deserve to have options, but with Medicare going broke, those who... ... FULL STORY
Linda Kloss October 05, 2009 There are many complex dimensions to health system reform but none are more ripe for change than the cumbersome and costly billing and claims processes. ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 Andis Robeznieks' article about changes at Catholic Health Initiatives (“Shifts at CHI,” Sept. 14, p. 10), which focused on investment losses during the first nine months of fiscal 2009, provided an incomplete portrait of the organization's true financial picture over the yearlong... ... FULL STORY
Gene Winters October 05, 2009 Rarely has a hospital received a “death sentence” from the CMS—the revocation of its Medicare and Medicaid certifications—and survived without a significant change in ownership or organizational structure. One such rarity, however, is the story of Haywood Regional Medical... ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 A list of the nation's largest rehabilitation providers, ranked by the number of facilities in 2008. Source: Modern Healthcare's 10th annual Post-Acute-Care Survey. Published Oct. 5, 2009. ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 Geisinger Health System, Danville, Pa., named John Buckley as chief administrative officer of Geisinger Northeast, which includes Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre (Pa.). Buckley succeeds Lissa Bryan-Smith, who was appointed... ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 Healthcare lawyers Jack Rovner, 63, and Kathy Roe, 42, launched a new firm in Chicago called the Health Law Consultancy. Both are former partners in the firm Neal Gerber Eisenberg, and Rovner was co-chairman of its health law practice. ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 Hill-Rom President and CEO Peter Soderberg will retire at the end of April 2011. Soderberg has led the Batesville, Ind.-based manufacturer of patient-mobility devices, hospital beds and other medical products since 2006. A search for Soderberg’s replacement is under way, and the board... ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 Humayun Chaudhry was named president and CEO of the Federation of State Medical Boards, the Dallas-based organization that represents the nation’s 70 medical boards. Chaudhry, 43, will assume the post in mid-October and will replace Barbara Schneidman, who has been serving as... ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 Memphis might not come first to mind as a destination for the Dalai Lama, but thanks in part to Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader spoke there late last month. ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 Stephen Pagliuca resigned from the board of Nashville-based HCA last month in order to run as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. Putting aside other private equity investors like Pagliuca, who hails from Bain Capital (which counts former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney... ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 Even as hopes appear to be fading for a bipartisan healthcare reform bill, an even greater divide than the one between Democrats and Republicans may have already been narrowed. Outliers is talking about the fierce rivalry between New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox fans. ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2009 “There are a number of companies that endeavored, in good faith, to follow the rules and went to their lawyers and consultants to make sure their programs complied, and when the (state) went in to audit, they found them not in compliance. … The staffing industry is struggling with... ... FULL STORY
