acute care hospitals

Officials with the State of New York said this week they'd decided to mount a new initiative to fight hospital-acquired infections. The move fits in with a growing movement by states to fight HAIs,... Read more...

 'Hospital in a hospital' losing favor
Largely due to reimbursement changes, the days of opening "hospital within a hospital" long-term care units may be fading. Consider LifeCare, which operates 950 long-term-care beds in the U.S. LifeCare is shifting its emphasis to freestanding facilities, with only 30 percent of beds remaining within acute-care hospitals. Article

A new measure under consideration in the Ohio legislature would force all of the state's hospitals to operate a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week emergency department. The rule would apply to freestanding surgery centers and other hospital competitors that don't offer a full range of acute care services. The bill is backed strongly by the Ohio Hospital Association which, though it isn't saying so directly, is fighting for turf fiercely defended by its members. Hospitals have long been …

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Folks, today I'm delighted to announce the release of our first-annual …

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> With claims falling, medical malpractice insurer The Doctors Co. is paying out more than $100 million in dividends to doctors in several states. Article

> It's just another step in the unholy dance that is trauma coverage in the U.S. This time, two of Georgia's trauma hospitals are considering either cutting back spending or dropping their Level I trauma centers entirely. …

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Massachusetts hospitals have collectively seen a substantial increase in profit over the past two years, with profits almost doubling between 2004 and 2006, according to an analysis of public financial data by the Massachusetts Nurses Association. Not surprisingly, given longstanding tensions on the issue, MNA is arguing that hospitals should use these funds to boost staff-to-patient ratios. Hospitals say that they've boosted staffing by 15 percent over the past three years, but the union …

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A new report by the Ohio Department of Health has given public health officials a new target to consider. The report, which focused on the state's 210 hospitals and 966 nursing homes, concluded that there were about 14,300 cases of Clostridium difficile infections last year in the state's healthcare facilities. Tracking this bug has become particularly important as the mortality rate from such infections has climbed. C. diff.-related deaths in Ohio have shot up 325 percent between the …

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In 2003, the federal government imposed a ban on the opening of new heart hospitals, suggesting that such facilities might be ordering heart procedures for financial rather than clinical reasons. Now, a new study by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality suggests that their worries had some foundation. The study, which appears in this week's issue of the Journal of the …

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In Texas, it's good to be a physician-owned specialty hospital--so good that the state legislature may once again discuss limiting physician self-referral to these hospitals. A recent report drafted by the state has concluded that such hospitals get markedly more insured patients and provide less emergency care (avoiding compulsory free care). At the same time, they get more referrals from physician owners, according to the state's "Analysis of Niche Hospitals in Texas and the Financial …

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Houston-based University General Hospital Systems has committed to a $1 billion agreement with Alliance Development Group of Charlotte, NC, under which the two will build 10 physician-owned acute care hospitals. Alliance is a construction management company which specializes in delivering turnkey facilities, with seemingly no high-profile healthcare experience to date. University, for its part, already operates a 72-bed hospital near Texas Medical Center in Houston. The next round of …

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