Community Benefit
Many states -- including some that have been hardest hit by the opioid crisis -- don't know how many of their youngest residents each year are born physically dependent on those drugs.
National health services organization IASIS Healthcare, the Phoenix Suns basketball team, and Phoenix Mercury have joined forces to open a multi-specialty clinic the organizations tout as the first of its kind in the country.
Patient perception of value and hospital choice, patient migration and payer mix are among the most serious challenges facing community hospitals in Massachusetts, according to a study released earlier this week by the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission.
The Marcus Foundation has awarded a $75 million gift to Piedmont Healthcare to bolster the growth of Piedmont Heart Institute, their well-known heart and vascular program, the system announced Friday. Additionally, the large monetary gift will facilitate the renewal of Piedmont's Atlanta campus through the establishment of the Marcus Heart and Vascular Center.
More consumers across all demographics are using alternative sites of care, including retail health clinics, urgent care centers and telehealth, according to a new online survey by management consulting firm Oliver Wyman. And many of those consumers are having good experiences.
About 500,000 women give birth each year in rural hospitals, yet access to labor and delivery units has been declining. Comprehensive figures are spotty, but an analysis of 306 rural hospitals in nine states with large rural populations found that 7.2 percent closed their obstetrics units between 2010 and 2014.
Uncompensated care in Missouri's hospitals swelled 469 percent over a 10-year period, from 2004 to 2014 -- rising from $154 million to $723 million over that span, according to the Missouri Hospital Association's annual Community Investment Report, which examines community benefit and economic data.
Two Flint, Michigan health centers have been awarded $500,000 by the Health and Human Services Department to expand their responses to the recent lead contamination disaster of Flint's water, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced Thursday, along with HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Dr. Nicole Lurie, who is leading the federal response and recovery effort in Flint.
The state last week won federal approval to shift most of its Medicaid recipients into managed care organizations, which are paid a fixed monthly fee from the state for each person in the plan. It's a strategy employed by about three dozen states, many for decades, to provide more predictable spending.
In Baltimore's poorer neighborhoods, where problems are plentiful and solutions scarce, Total Health Care strives to correct disparities in access and treatment long faced by people who struggle to get by.