Healthcare Companies

Kaiser Permanente announced yesterday that it was awarding $7 million to a group of California's public hospitals and clinic, with funding aimed at helping these "safety net" providers offer better preventive care. The $7 million was broken down into a total of 57 smaller grants, awarded through Kaiser's Health Information Technology Initiative. About $5 million of the funds will help the hospitals and clinics stay up to date with preventive technology such as automation for mammogram …

Traditionally, hospice programs have only been available if patients agreed to give up on end-of-life treatments such as chemotherapy. In recent times, however, some hospices and insurance companies have taken a new "open access" approach, giving patients access to some hospice-style social supports and benefits while allowing them to continue some end-stage treatments. The idea is to get these patients into hospice care earlier, rather than encouraging them to wait until they're all but …

A pair of New York hospitals--Flushing Hospital Medical Center and Jamaica Hospital Medical Center--have filed a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) suit against health insurer UnitedHealth. The suit is unusual in that RICO suits are typically used as a tool by public prosecutors in their war against against gangland activity. But that hasn't stopped the two hospitals, which are seeking at least $50 million in punitive damages and millions more in actual …

According to some advocacy groups, it looks like pharma companies aren't coming up with free prescription drugs for the needy Medicare recipients, despite a pointed congressional request eight months ago. Several pharma companies had called off their drug assistance programs for Medicare patients once Part D became effective last year. The drug makers said that they were afraid they'd be accused of violating anti-kickback rules if they kept the programs open, though CMS has since said …

A despite over mandatory overtime at Pawtucket, RI-based Memorial hospital has led to the filing of a National Labor Relations Board complain against the 294-bed community hospital. The union, which represents nurses and hospital workers, are upset because the hospital has banned a button which the executives see as inflammatory. The buttons, which say "KNOW RESPECT" include a small "k" and "w" in the first word, leading them to read "NO RESPECT" from a distance. The union says the …

Long the bane of healthcare administrators, the battlin' Service Employees International Union has announced plans to take things to the next level by forming an SEIU Healthcare division. The new union, which is intended to expand organizing efforts, will represent 30 SEIU locals. The SEIU has already been quite vocal in nursing matters, in particular, supporting nurses in efforts to expand nurse to patient ratios for what it says is needed safety upgrades. It has 84,000 registered nurses …

After years of underfunding, this is now a great time for the vaccine business. Three new vaccines hit the market during 2006 alone, the most known for a single year, and costly new vaccines are likely to find acceptance this year. Vaccines released during 2006 include HPV, which has been linked to the development of cervical cancer, and rotavirus, which kills 600,000 children around the world. And the trend is likely to continue, experts say. Technology breakthroughs, boosted by higher …

A Pensacola, FL-based industry group that regularly brought healthcare execs and vendors together for cozy--and questionable--networking parties has decided to close its doors. The Healthcare Research & Development Institute, which charged individual healthcare execs $25,000 a year and corporate members (including healthcare publisher Modern Healthcare) $40,000 a year to attend its parties, …

The California Medical Association is mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore. Last week, the group began a campaign to bring patients into its class action lawsuit against Blue Cross of California. The suit, originally filed by a group of individual policyholders, alleges that Blue Cross of California has engaged in a pattern of dumping policyholders after approving expensive treatments, then refusing to pay the bills for those treatments. The state hospital association has …

Sometimes, it makes sense for the pot to call the kettle black. No stranger to accusations of unfair policy cancellations, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan has begun working with state officials to establish stricter--and fairer--rules under which individual health plans to be canceled. Kaiser itself was recently fined $100,000 by California regulators after dropping a policyholder it accused of concealing his epilepsy; it had canceled the member despite the fact that his condition had never …