Healthcare Administration

The fallout continued this week at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, which is struggling to cope with entrenched management and personnel problems. This week, the hospital's chief medical officer was replaced, following the highly-publicized death of a patient waiting for attention in the hospital's ED. Dr. Roger Peeks, who was brought in to overhaul the troubled hospital's medical operations, has been placed on "ordered absence" by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and …

HCA and the SEIU Florida Healthcare Union have agreed on a contract covering 4,000 workers at six of the state's hospitals. The contract raises wages, setting the lowest pay rate at $9.15 an hour, as well as creating patient-care committees giving staff members an avenue for proposing process improvements. It also offers some job security features, a real plus given that some fear HCA will eventually sell some hospitals to pay off debt. Nurses are particularly happy about the patient-care …

New Jersey legislators are moving ahead with a bill which would let the state publish hospital-by-hospital infection rates. The bill would require hospitals to track major complications like surgical-site infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia and central-line infections, while giving the state's health commissioner the option to expand the list or extend the …

Like peers around the country, hospitals in the sprawling region surrounding New York City are facing a emergency department crowding crisis. A recent survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians found that more than half of physicians responding from New York state, New Jersey and Connecticut reported that ED boarding had increased significantly in recent years. More worrisome, nearly …

CMS has run out of patience with Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, which it says has put emergency room patients in "immediate jeopardy" of harm or death. The hospital, formerly known as King/Drew, was already on bad terms with CMS, which had threatened to take away the hospital's federal funding certification after serious care problems emerged. This is part of a larger pattern for King-Harbor, which has been cited more than a dozen times for care problems over the past three and a …

Nearly all of Wisconsin's hospitals--a full 95 percent--are not-for-profits that enjoy a state property tax exemption. Despite resistance from the hospitals, the state is continuing to look at recouping some of that revenue with a separate hospital-specific tax. State governor Jim Doyle (D) wants to impose an 0.8 percent tax on the state's 109 non-profit hospitals, which he says will generate $418 million in revenues for the state over the next two years. The proposal has been posted by a …

The city of New Orleans' top medical official is angrily contesting new state data which conflicts with his findings that death rates have risen substantially since Hurricane Katrina. Officials with Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals yesterday released numbers which contradict an analysis by Dr. Kevin Stephens that mortality rates have spiked 47 percent since the disastrous storm. State officials concede that the city is still struggling, but said that Stephens' numbers are …

In the wake of a scandal over the falsified credentials of a state public hospital manager, the state's Department of Public Health (DPH) is going on the warpath. The DPH launched a comprehensive review of how it verifies professional licenses and credentials at public hospitals after a social services director at a Boston-area public hospital admitted she'd faked hers. The DPH has begun a program under which the four state-run hospitals re-evaluate their process for verifying …

Pennsylvania's hospitals are fighting to sideline a bill which would make them report on hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) through a single statewide electronic system. Establishing such a system is one of a group of health reform initiatives Governor Ed Rendell (D) is trying to implement. Rendell has said that HAIs generated $3.5 billion in charges last year. According to the state's Health Care Cost Containment Council, 19,000 patients suffered from HAIs in 2005, or about 1 percent of …

A new retail clinic venture plans to focus on airport locations, beginning with one of Georgia's most active. AeroClinic has launched its first location in the main terminal of Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport. In addition to offering routine care for minor ailments, the clinic will also offer preventive testing, physical exams and routine immunizations. The company plans to open its next location in Philadelphia International Airport later this summer. The clinic accepts Aetna …