gap

New research by healthcare quality measurement firm Press Ganey Associates has concluded that patients' perceptions of U.S. hospitals improved slightly last year, despite some entrenched complaints which don't seem to be going away over time. Patients gave hospitals an overall rating of 84.2 out of 100 points, up 1.2 points from five years ago. At the same time, however, patients continue to be dissatisfied with room conditions, food quality and problems in the discharge …

Hospitals in New Orleans are searching far and wide to fill major gaps in their nursing lineups, still struggling with shortages arising from mass departures after Hurricane Katrina. For example, Ochsner Medical Center-West Bank and West Jefferson Medical Center have been forced to fill the 100 vacancies at each hospital with contract workers from out of state. The two also share …

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter (D) has signed an executive order setting up a task force to examine the nursing profession's status in the state. The Nurse Workforce and Patient Care Task Force is looking at nurses' contributions to quality of care in healthcare facilities and the state's environment for nursing practice, as well as the accuracy of quality and staffing statistics. The task force will also consider ways in which new legislation might address the state's healthcare staffing …

Hoping to address the region's growing shortage of nurses and technicians, community colleges and hospitals in northern Virginia have begun working together to subsidize nursing faculty positions and training programs. The region, which is part of the DC metropolitan area, lost about 5,000 nurses over the past six years, while the number of new workers stayed flat. As a result, the region has only 682 trained nurses per 100,000 residents, 30 percent lower than the national average. To …

UnitedHealthcare (UHC) has signed on for an HHS program designed to help doctors treat ethnic minorities more effectively, adding its support to a growing industry movement focusing on differences in minority care. While UHC's participation is limited to Web efforts at the moment, the extent of their outreach efforts to doctors suggests that they're taking the issue seriously.

Working with the HHS Office of Minority Health (OMH), the health plan is launching a website which will …

According to some estimates, it would take $50 billion to fund healthcare needs in developing countries. To close this gap, one international health organization proposes that developing countries get the chance to cancel portions of their debt if they spend on approved health projects. Backers say the Debt2Health plan is a "win-win"--cutting the risk creditors face while giving needy countries more money to deal with health crises. Indonesia, Pakistan, Peru and Kenya will become the …

The number of U.S. medical students choosing primary care work is falling like a stone, largely because primary care doctors make so much less than specialists do, according to a new study by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The study offers a similar cautionary note as a PCP study released last year by the American College of Physicians (ACP). The ACP found that the number of internal medicine trainees planning on PCP work fell from 54 percent in 1998 to 25 percent in …

What can an auto industry worker do when they lose their job? Well, if they're in Michigan, one option is to become a nurse. Hoping to slow the effects of the state's mushrooming nursing shortage, some of the state's universities and hospitals are working together to create accelerated nursing education programs. The shortage is already large and expected to grow worse over the next few years. State officials are expecting Michigan to be short 7,000 nurses by 2010, according to Jeanette …

It's beginning to look like HHS Secretary's Michael Leavitt's proposal for reforming healthcare in Louisiana is getting a big "no sale" from the state's leaders. Gov. Kathleen Blanco flatly rejected Leavitt's plan, which would involve using federal funds for the uninsured to provide health insurance for just about half the state's uninsured, calling it "an insult to our intelligence." Blanco says the plan would not pay for what Leavitt claims, as it provides no new funding, leaving a …

According to a new study, the shortage of nurses shrunk by 420,000 registered nurses. This means there is still a gap of 340,000 nurses, which is significantly less than the 760,000 originally projected. The study found that 80 percent of new nurses chose the job after leaving a career in another field. These nurses are in their late 20s and early 30s, rather than their early 20s. But despite a surge in registered nurses, the shortage still promises to cause problems for the healthcare …