Nursing unions wanting higher staffing ratios have more ammunition thanks to a new study concluding that increasing nurse staffing levels could help hospitals avoid Medicare penalties for avoidable readmissions.
The study covered readmissions of Medicare patients who suffered heart attacks, heart failure or pneumonia. It appears in the October issue of Health Affairs.
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More than 700,000 federal workers will be looking for ways to put food on the table as much of the federal government shut down Tuesday over budget squabbles in Congress.
But if you're a federal rat, it's still fat city. Federal mice, too.
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Demand for primary-care doctors remains strong, while the incentive packages they are being offered are changing, according to a survey by Merritt Hawkins, an Irving, Texas-based physician search firm.
Merritt Hawkins had 3,097 recruiting assignments between April 1, 2012, and March 31, 2013, according to its 20th annual review of physician and advanced practitioners recruiting incentives. And, for the seventh-straight year, the most sought-after
physicians were family doctors and internists with 624 and 194 searches respectively
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Part of a four-year tentative labor agreement reached this week between the California Nurses Association and Dignity Health includes a new program designed to curtail and deal with workplace violence.
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Oncology nurse Theresa Brown, in an op-ed piece in the New York Times Sunday, argued for government-mandated nurse-staffing ratios.
She cited research showing that each extra patient a nurse had above an established nurse-patient ratio made it 7% more likely that one of the patients would die, and that 20,000 people died a year because they were in hospitals with overworked nurses.
“When hospitals have insufficient nursing staffs, patients who would have gotten better can get hurt, or worse,” Brown wrote.
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The for-profit assisted-living industry came under the harsh spotlight of PBS' “Frontline” investigators Tuesday night as the news program took Seattle-based Emeritus Corp. to task for a number of deaths and injuries involving residents with dementia at Emeritus facilities across the country.
Emeritus, which was founded in 1983 and has 483 facilities around the country, is the one of the country's biggest assisted-living operators.
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The American Nurses Association wants the federal government to require insurers selling plans on state insurance exchanges to have at least a certain percentage of advanced practice registered nurses in their provider networks.
The ANA proposed the minimum level would be equal to 10% of the number of APRNs who independently bill Medicare Part B in a state.
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Highmark's turn to try to stanch losses at Pittsburgh's West Penn Allegheny Health System has begun.
Roughly 260 workers at the health system were laid off today and another 200 vacant jobs were eliminated. The four-hospital system, the hub of Highmark's new eight-hospital Allegheny Health Network, has hemorrhaged cash and lost patients in recent years. Now the system must shrink accordingly, said Dan Laurent, an Allegheny Health Network spokesman.
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A major healthcare provider in the Denver area announced it was eliminating 300 jobs, but then a major healthcare payer announced it was adding an equal number of new positions.
Denver Health announced this week it would eliminate 300 jobs in an effort to save $18 million over 12 months. On July 18, just as the dust was settling, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Colorado said it was adding 300 jobs at its Denver office “as part of a comprehensive effort to support its growing business.”
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Jindal
There's been a lot of turnover at LSU Health Care Services, the Louisiana public hospital system headquartered in Baton Rouge.
Not only has the system's top administrator resigned, but it turns out more than 40% of the state's 3,805 layoffs for the fiscal year that ended in June came from Louisiana State University-affiliated hospitals.
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Jindal
There's been a lot of turnover at LSU Health Care Services, the Louisiana public hospital system headquartered in Baton Rouge.
Not only has the system's top administrator resigned, but it turns out more than 40% of the state's 3,805 layoffs for the fiscal year that ended in June came from Louisiana State University-affiliated hospitals.
Read more »
