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Byline: Steven Ross Johnson The goal of being more inclusive has prompted many hospitals to re-examine many facets of a patient's stay. From clinical staff diversity and cultural sensitivity training [...]

The Veterans Affairs Department may have wrongfully denied up to one-third of non-VA emergency claims, putting vets at risk for bills they otherwise would not have received. A new analysis, [...]

Byline: Alex Kacik Healthcare executives often point to a persistent financial pressure that has accelerated strategies to cut costs, grow revenue or potentially scale up. That pressure may be causing [...]

American health maintenance organizations, hospitals and healthcare industry professionals are beginning to use 'hospitalists', hospital-based internists, as a means of providing better treatment for seriously ill patients, providing general practitioners with more time for outpatients and cutting organizational costs. Hospitalists work only with hospitalized patients and transfer care back to the original outpatient internist when the patient is released. The system has worked well in England and Canada for a number of years and recent American experiments have shown good results., 'Hospitalists' specialize in managing care of the very ill They're practicing all over the country: In Gainesville, Fla.; Long Island, N.Y.; Minneapolis; and San Francisco. They work for HMOs, physician [...]

Hospitals are promoting their health clubs as part of their preventive medicine and wellness programs. Hospitals are making multi-million dollar capital investments in state-of-the-art health clubs that combine excercise programs, aerobic exercise equipment and rehabilitation treatment. According to the Assn of Hospital Health and Fitness, there are now 350 hospital fitness centers in operation., Jack LaLanne, meet the Sisters of Mercy. Bally Total Fitness, say hello to the Rush System for Health. Hospitals and healthcare systems are responding to demands by managed-care plans and [...]

Some hospitals are still biased against AIDS patients, many of whom remain uninsured. But many providers are overcoming stereotypes and developing more economical AIDS-care programs. An overview of such programs is presented. An HMO-style program for HIV and AIDS patients could be available in early 1995. In Los Angeles, CA, the Physicians Association for AIDS Care have developed a managed-care AIDS-care model.

Hospitals and other healthcare organizations are increasingly turning to subacute care as a means of filling empty beds and increasing revenues, but the practice cannot solve all providers' problems. The Health Care Financing Administration, state regulators, patient groups and others are carefully examining subacute care. The HCFA wants to make sure that the practice is not designed solely to generate higher Medicare reimbursement rates.

Providers of all kinds are becoming involved in the subacute care market because it is needed by a wide variety of patients, is cost-effective for long-term care and meets the demands of third-party payers. Subacute care is appropriate for patients who do not need acute-care services but do need more care than is available at home or in a nursing facility. Many hospitals have added subacute care units, and more are expected to follow. Also, several large nursing home chain now include subacute care among their services. Some specific entrants in the market and their strategies are discussed

Hospital-sponsored inner-city healthcare programs provide cost-efficient care to many indigent and Medicaid patients, but few such programs exist. Hospitals' community programs typically provide preventive, wellness and primary care, especially to women and children. Some of these programs give poor patients alternatives to emergency-room treatment.

Doctors who are already part of integrated medical delivery systems will be in a better position than private-practice physicians when healthcare reform is passed. An integrated system usually provides physicians' services, acute care, insurance and medical support programs. Many primary-care physicians contract with hospitals and integrated systems but don't work directly for them. California is the leader in the development of integrated systems as new groups develop to compete with Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. Managed care will definitely continue to expand, especially under healthcare reform.

Byline: Maureen McKinney Dr. Jason Adelman had long suspected that the naming system most hospitals use to temporarily identify newborns in the neonatal intensive-care unit could lead to confusion and [...]

A Modern Healthcare magazine study on hospital charity care discovered that many hospitals do not want to reveal details about how much charity work they do. The study also found that hospitals often misrepresent data about charity care. In 1990 hospitals lost 6% of patient revenues to uncompensated-charges. However, these uncompensated care costs were only 3% of total expenses in 1990. The amount of charity work a hospital does can affect tax exemption.

Byline: Rebecca Vesely Prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections, or MRSA, is on the rise, and a new report on California hospitals indicates the largest jumps over the past decade [...]

Byline: NEIL MCLAUGHLIN Notes on the news: People of a certain age may remember an episode of the 1960s science-fiction TV show "The Outer Limits. In this installment, monstrous aliens [...]

Byline: Matthew DoBias Having moved their health overhaul bill to the debate stage, Senate Democrats now face a minefield of issues that threaten to squash the reform effort altogether. Rifts [...]

The faint echoes of the stock market boom are indicated by studying hospital defined-benefit pension plan filings for 2007. For the opening trading day of 2007, Jan. 3, the Dow [...]

THE THOUGHT THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT would set up panels to weigh the fates of seriously ill Americans has been widely condemned. However, such panels have actually been used beforeby [...]

Byline: Gregg Blesch How much is it appropriate for a hospital to pay a physician? Without explaining how the line was drawn, the Justice Department says it was crossed in [...]

Byline: Joe Carlson Legal observers across the country are carefully following a civil trial in Florida in which a not-for-profit hospital stands accused of "dumping'' an illegal immigrant in his [...]

Byline: Gregg Blesch The Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati may lose another hospital and perhaps two, rendering it a much smaller system than it once was and not much of [...]

Facing red ink and trying to avoid layoffs and cuts in patient services, hospitals in Southeast Michigan are looking to squeeze greater savings out of their supply purchases this year. [...]

Saying you are sorry is never an easy thing to do, especially when it comes to doctors, nurses or pharmacists admitting medical mistakes at large institutions such as hospitals. Over [...]

Competition for profitable outpatient services in Southeast Michigan is heating up again as some hospitals and physician groups seek to extend their geographic market to capture additional paying patients. Rising [...]

Garden City Hospital, Mt. Clemens Regional Medical Center and Sinai-Grace Hospital have been selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to participate in a new effort to improve care in [...]

Medical researchers nationwide will soon have access to about 3.5 million blood samples collected over the past 44 years from Michigan newborns, thanks to a new neonatal repository at Detroit's [...]

Byline: Shawn Rhea When Michael Green took over as president and chief executive officer of New Hampshire's Concord Hospital in June 1992, getting hospital staff used to the idea of [...]

With the jobless rate in Michigan hitting levels not seen in two decades and people losing their health insurance or reducing coverage to save on premium dollars, hospitals are overhauling [...]

How hospitals are designing the new revenue cycle process: Patients are referred or scheduled for an elective procedure, surgery or admission. Registration staff verifies insurance eligibility or method of payment. [...]

The Michigan Certificate of Need Commission will decide Feb. 5 whether to appoint a work group to study changing 23-year-old state regulations governing the number of hospitals allowed to offer [...]

After spending $750,000 on upgrades and renovations last year, Dr. Ramsay Dass is on a mission to reopen 50 acute-care beds at Detroit Hope Hospital to serve low-income and uninsured [...]

Byline: Alan Bleyer 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 [...]

The combination of patients not taking charge of their regimens and the vagaries of Medicare reimbursement policies too often result in home-based chronic care that cyclically morphs into expensive acute [...]

Byline: Joe Carlson For evidence of how understanding diversity and cultural competency can improve patient outcomes, Juana Slade points to the obstetrics unit at AnMed Health Medical Center. Slade, director [...]

Byline: Jean DerGurahian More board leadership is required if hospitals are going to increase their level of performance on quality measures enough to qualify as a top facility as named [...]

Uncompensated care load increasing for hospitals Reflecting a worsening economy, Michigan's hospitals provided a 61 percent increase in uncompensated care in 2007, to $2.1 billion from $1.3 billion in 2005, [...]

Sure you know about Chip Kahn, but have you met his mother? Political tenacity must run in the family. Felicia Kahn, a delegate for Hillary Rodham Clinton and the mother [...]

Byline: Jean Chenoweth Once again, Thomson 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks for Success winners show meaningful differences vs. peers in research performed for Modern Healthcare's annual 100 Top Hospitals supplement. [...]

Is New Orleans' Charity Hospital a historic place or just history? Almost three years after being severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the still-shuttered Charity Hospital in New Orleans is still [...]

NEW YORK-NYU Medical Center last month said it is renaming itself the NYU Elaine A. and Kenneth G. Langone Medical Center in honor of the chairman of its board of [...]

NCFE exec may find posse that's looking for her is getting larger In a sure sign of true notoriety-and a rare event in healthcare-former National Century Financial Enterprises executive Rebecca [...]