Richard Pizzi

Frankford Hospital, a three-hospital healthcare system in the Philadelphia region, has changed its name to Aria Health as it expands its clinical programs and services.

St. Joseph Regional Medical Center in South Bend, Ind., has announced a pay freeze for employees as it prepares to open a new facility later this year.

Patients in Minnesota will be the first in the continental United States to have real-time access to a “virtual clinic,” where they can talk with a physician who can make diagnoses and prescribe medications via the Web or a phone.

During the last 10 years, New York counties outside New York City cited the transfer of personal financial assets in denying an average of 7 percent of applications for Medicaid coverage of nursing home care.

Most Americans don’t support an “individual mandate” for health insurance, although they do support a “shared-responsibility” plan that combines an individual mandate with expanded roles for employers, government and insurers.

The medical staff at Oakwood Hospital & Medical Center in Dearborn, Mich., will soon offer medical care to recently laid-off Ford Motor Company workers at no cost.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, one of the nation’s premiere cancer treatment centers, has signed a multi-year contract for revenue cycle management and collection management services.

Proposed cuts in Medicaid spending at Florida hospitals would hurt struggling local economies, costing thousands of high-wage jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in related economic activity annually, according to a University of Florida study.

The depressed economy threatens the financial health of Ohio hospitals, with many projecting losses and cuts in staff, programs and construction projects, according to the Ohio Hospital Association.

Hospitals across the eastern half of the United States are feeling the pain of recession, and in some cases are seeing margins fall to unprecedented lows.