Community news and information

With a $2.1 million federal grant, Ohio will expand a database for background checks allowing healthcare companies to be immediately notified if workers have been convicted of a crime that would ban them from the job.
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President Barack Obama is planning a mental health conference next month in response to gun violence.
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Memorial Medical Center in Ludington, Mich., is the latest hospital with plans to become a member of Spectrum Health. Memorial has signed a nonbinding letter of intent to join the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based not-for-profit system.
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Deano Thornton, CEO of Winn Community Health Center, a federally qualified healthcare center in the small city of Winnfield, La., knew the clinic would need the most up-to-date tools for reaching out to his underserved community and coordinating with the other community health clinics across the...
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Physician retention has been just as much an issue as getting physicians to make an initial commitment to rural life.
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It sometimes takes a phone call to make meaningful use of electronic health records in rural areas. In the central West Virginia village of Clay, with a population of about 490, Dr. Sarah Chouinard heads Community Care of West Virginia, also a Community Health Network member.
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Some small, rural healthcare organizations have become health information technology front-runners and their leaders techno mavens, despite the digital divide that separates the larger, urban health IT have-nows from the smaller, rural IT have-not-yets.
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Allison Guarino understands the controversy over new rules allowing 15-year-olds to buy the morning-after pill without a prescription. But as someone who teaches pregnancy prevention to ninth-graders in Boston, she thinks lowering the age will "help the girls who need the help the most."
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HCA, Nashville, today reported its final first-quarter results, adding a little more color on a performance it already previewed last month.
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Investor-owned hospital chains continued to report unexceptional first-quarter earnings this week, but good news from the CMS on 2014 Medicare payments renewed investor confidence in the sector.
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