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Medicine's Top Earners Are Not the M.D.s

THOUGH the recent release of Medicare’s physician payments cast a spotlight on the millions of dollars paid to some specialists, there is a startling secret behind America’s health care hierarchy: Physicians, the most highly trained members in the industry’s work force, are on average right in the middle of the compensation pack.

New York Times
May 17, 2014

What a strong union can do for your nurses — and you

A world without nurses would be a dismal place indeed. Nurses do many things for us, not the least of which is to care greatly for the health and well being of humankind. Nursing is a job, but it is so much more. It is a calling that is deeply rooted in the soul of a good and caring nurse. I have been a nurse and answered this calling for the last 37 years. I work in an ICU in an acute care hospital, and have seen many changes impacting my chosen profession over these past years. Some of these change have been for the better. Recently, many of these changes have been detrimental to my profession and the care I am able to provide my patients.

Times-Standard-OPINION
May 16, 2014

Hayward: St. Rose Hospital, nurses agree on contract

St. Rose Hospital has reached a contract agreement with its 300 registered nurses. The pact gives nurses a 4 percent raise over two years and ties pay increases to seniority. It also includes a workplace violence prevention program.

Mercury News
May 15, 2014

Closure of DMC would be grim

As a registered nurse who has worked for many years at Doctors Medical Center San Pablo, I'm intimately familiar with the critical need for a fully operational hospital in West Contra Costa County and the disastrous public health crisis its closure will create. As it is, West County, one of the most illness-prone regions in Northern California, doesn't have enough emergency capacity for its current population. DMC has 79 percent of the hospital beds and 60 percent of the emergency care in the region.

Contra Costa Times - Letter to the Editor
May 14, 2014

Nurses Union Lobbies Against Nonprofit Hospital Exemption

Hundreds of registered nurses lobbied lawmakers in Sacramento Monday on a package of nursing-friendly bills. The major legislative offensive from The California Nurses' Association included opposition to the income tax-exempt status of non-profit hospitals.

The California Report
May 14, 2014

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Should hospitals be more like Walmart?

We've heard about how healthcare should be more like the airline industry or customer-friendly online retailers such as Amazon or Zappos.com. But a new article in MIT Technology Review argues that after the information technology revolution, medicine will be more like superstore Walmart.

Fierce Health IT
May 10, 2014

Why CHS is converting two hospitals from inpatient to outpatient

Community Health Systems is converting a Pennsylvania hospital to a walk-in clinic, the second such announcement in a week for the Franklin-based company. Mid-Valley Hospital, in Peckville, Penn., will stop offering inpatient and emergency department services in July, according to a report from the Scranton Times-Tribune. Earlier this week, The Tennessean reported that Haywood Park Community Hospital in Brownsville would also end inpatient emergency services effective July 31.

Nashville Buisiness Journal
May 10, 2014

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Report Finds More Flaws in Digitizing Patient Files

Although the federal government is spending more than $22 billion to encourage hospitals and doctors to adopt electronic health records, it has failed to put safeguards in place to prevent the technology from being used for inflating costs and overbilling, according to a new report by a federal oversight agency.

New York Times
May 10, 2014

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The Trouble with EHRs

Although electronic health records are known to reduce healthcare costs, concerns about accuracy and usability—and the risk of EHR-caused medical errors—are growing. The move away from paper medical records to EHRs has many benefits, but the flip side is that providers need to carefully manage the usability, accuracy, and audit trails of EHRs across the entire care team.

Health Leaders Media
May 10, 2014

Third of Americans skip healthcare due to cost

An international survey of 11 developed countries, American adults are the most likely to forego treatment due to the cost, struggle to pay bills, and spend the most out-of-pocket on treatment. The results revealed that in 2013 37% of U.S. adults either didn’t see a doctor, didn’t seek the recommended treatment, or failed to fill a prescription because of prohibitive costs. This compares with only 4% of respondents in the UK and 6% in Sweden.

ExpatHealth.org
May 10, 2014