healthcare facilities

Cross Country Healthcare is settling a wage and hour class action lawsuit filed by California workers in 2003. Cross Country provides staffing services to healthcare facilities. The company will pay up to $10 million in damages to nurses, legal fees and administrative costs. Report

In what has become a public battle, Kindred Healthcare is in a heated dispute with the company that leases it 225 healthcare facilities. Based on feedback from five different property appraisers, Kindred execs came to the conclusion that it is paying roughly $95 million more than it ought to pay to lease the facilities from Ventas Inc.  Not only that, the appraisers said the 3.5 percent rental escalators stipulated in the current lease were higher than the market average. The CEO of …

A GAO report has found that the National Disaster Medical System doesn't adequately plan for transporting nursing home patients. Though it's a task that's left primarily to local officials, federal aid may be needed if they become overwhelmed. It's an issue that arose following Hurricane Katrina last year, when nursing home operators were unsure whether to evacuate patients who were already in fragile condition.

"This report outlines gaps in our disaster response system which may …

House Republicans are stalling on a bill that would fund national health IT projects, citing a Congressional Budget Office estimate that the bill would end up "increasing direct spending and decreasing revenue." The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Nancy Johnson (D-CT) and Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) was approved by the House Ways and Means Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee last week. The bill would make the role of National Health IT Coordinator official and enact changes to U.S. …

Healthcare Property Investors, a real estate investment trust, purchased CNL Retirement Properties in a blockbuster deal valued at $3.6 billion. The Wall Street Journal reports that the deal creates an "industry behemoth" controlling the nation's largest portfolio of medical real estate, including healthcare facilities, nursing homes and medical office buildings. The reasoning behind the deal? While some of the interest is no doubt due to the popularity of medical real estate, …

Public health officials are expressing concern that a federal plan to respond to an avian flu outbreak may not do enough to ensure that supplies are available and that local healthcare facilities are able to handle a sharp increase in patients. Michael Osterhom of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Minnesota says that he is worried about the impact of an outbreak on a global economy.

- see this …

Now that cell phones and WiFi have been proven safe and essential for healthcare facilities, there's a race to get signals into those buildings. This has some interesting possibilities, but it is also causing some technical challenges to hospital technology managers. Frequently, buildings are too dense to allow strong cell phone signals, while increased demand for WiFi and VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) is putting pressure on the ad-hoc WiFi networks being built in many …

Health IT vendor Cerner reported excellent third-quarter results yesterday, posting profits up nearly 80 percent to $26.4 million, thanks largely to new bookings. The company reported 233 implementations of its Millennium Information System in the quarter. Cerner now has 4,500 systems installed at healthcare facilities around the world. Highlights of the quarter for the company included a $149.3 million deal with Fujitsu to work on the massive NHS project in the UK.

The …

Hospitals and other healthcare facilities across the Gulf Coast breathed a loud sigh of relief as it became clear that Hurricane Rita failed to create the kind of widespread damage some worst-case scenarios had predicted. HCA hospitals called damage to its facilities "limited to non-existent." Others were not as lucky. The Houston Chronicle reports that hospitals in Beaumont, Texas, suffered quite badly. For staff who remained to watch the few patients who were not evacuated …