Free Republic

Just as students head back to college and families finish summer vacations comes the latest bad news from pest control companies: Bedbug infestations are getting worse and becoming more common in some places, including dorms, hotels, nursing homes, hospitals, office buildings, and schools and day-care centers. According to a survey released Wednesday by the National Pest Management Association and the University of Kentucky, pest control companies say there has been double-digit growth in infestations in the past year. About 54 percent of pest companies reported treating bedbugs in college dorms, compared with 35 percent in 2010; 80 percent reported treating...

Hospitals in Massachusetts will reap an annual windfall of $275 million due to a loophole enshrined in the new health care law. Hospitals in most other states will get less money as a result. The disclosure was buried in a regulation that Medicare issued late last week. Hospital association executives in other states are up in arms over the news, which comes at a time when they are girding for more cuts under the newly signed federal debt deal. "If I could think of a better word than outrageous, I would come up with it," said Steve Brenton, president of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hospitals in Massachusetts will reap an annual windfall of $275 million through a loophole enshrined in the new health care law. Hospitals in most other states will get less money as a result. Hospital association executives in other states are up in arms over the news, buried in a Medicare regulation issued Monday. It comes at a time when hospitals face more cuts under the newly signed federal debt deal. "If I could think of a better word than outrageous, I would come up with it," said Steve Brenton, president of the Wisconsin Hospital Association. Even Medicare...

The death toll at a hospital where medical supplies were deliberately sabotaged could rise still further, police said last night, after they began investigating the deaths of two more patients. Detectives launched a murder inquiry last week after three people being treated at the Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport died when batch of saline solution was contaminated with insulin Rebecca Leighton, 27, a nurse at the hospital was still being questioned last night after being arrested on suspicion of murder. She was arrested on Wednesday morning at her flat just a mile from the hospital where she was employed as...

In a long-sought move, the University of Miami won a legislative victory on Wednesday when Florida lawmakers agreed to extend state lawsuit protection to university doctors working in public hospitals. Gov. Rick Scott will likely sign the bill into law. Scott is also expected to sign another lawsuit-limitation bill that passed Wednesday that changes the way people can sue automobile makers. The vote to give “sovereign immunity” to UM has been years in the making. The state protects government hospital employees, residents and interns — including those at Miami’s Jackson Health System — from major medical malpractice judgments. But UM...

The joke that's going around is that the Mayans got it wrong: The world is ending this year, not 2012. Here's the lates sign of that. A superbug is spreading around America, and has hit Southern California. LA Times: A dangerous drug-resistant bacterium has spread to patients in Southern California, according to a study by Los Angeles County public health officials. More than 350 cases of the Carbapenem-Resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, or CRKP, have been reported at healthcare facilities in Los Angeles County, mostly among elderly patients at skilled-nursing and long-term care facilities, according to a study by Dr. Dawn Terashita,...

HOSPITALS are being forced to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on super-strong beds for patients weighing up to 72 stone. NHS trusts across the country have spent five-figure sums on hiring or buying reinforced beds. The City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Trust spent £34,780 on five beds, and rents another four. It has also had to provide trolleys, chairs and toilets capable of holding very obese patients and make doorways bigger. North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust has spent £38,000 on the specialist beds, County Durham and Darlington £21,761, Newcastle £10,172 and South Tees £17,158. Officials at South Tees Hospitals...

Monday will be the one-year anniversary of the House passage of ObamaCare. To mark this occasion, IBD is going look at some new problems that have already developed due to this law. But first we’ll examine how ObamaCare fails to address chronic hospital inefficiency. “Hospitals have not adopted the practices that have led to productivity gains in other industries,” said Rich Garnick, CEO of Anthelio, which works with hospitals to improve efficiency. Garnick says hospitals lack “a seamless approach for tracking information.”

It is a strange thing when those who would pay them support higher taxes. Yet that is what we are seeing around the country as states wrestle with how to shoehorn the burgeoning cost of Medicaid into their budgets. Health care providers, led by hospitals and nursing home operators, are stepping forward to support taxes on their revenues. They are hoping states will take the tax money, use it to get Medicaid matching funds from the federal government, then leave health care out of the fray when cutting state budgets. To some, this may rightly sound like a form of...

Arizona lawmakers are trying to widen the state's illegal immigration crackdown with a proposal to require hospitals to confirm whether patients are in the country legally. The National Conference of State Legislatures says it knows of no other states considering similar bills. The proposal being heard late Monday by the Arizona Senate's judiciary committee would require hospitals to contact immigration authorities if a patient is an illegal immigrant.

GALVESTON — The crushing news came last month as Maria Sanchez was being prepared for surgery to remove a banana-size tumor along her spine that had crept between her vertebrae. Unable to use her right hand because of the growing tumor, Sanchez, 24, had been at the University of Texas Medical Branch's John Sealy Hospital for six days when, she said, a Spanish-speaking doctor told her she had to leave the hospital immediately because she was an illegal immigrant. The doctor said she should have surgery in Mexico, according to Sanchez. Sanchez's hospital records state that she was discharged because...

Top Hospitals Across United States Ranked Based on Patient Mortality Emma Hitt, PhD processing....   January 26, 2010 — A first-ever ranking of the nation's top 50 hospitals based on a comprehensive study of patient death and complication rates at nearly 5000 hospitals has been released this week.The study was conducted by HealthGrades as part of the ninth annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence study. The analysis was based on approximately 40 million Medicare patient discharges for the years 2007, 2008, and 2009.The study, led by Kristin Reed, MPH, Carol Nicholas, MSTC, and Rick May, MD, with the...

Repeal of ObamaCare can't come soon enough -- as several damaging provisions are set to take effect this year. For starters, it has effectively stopped the construction of physician-owned hospitals throughout the country. Section 6001 of the health-care law required physician-owned hospitals to obtain their Medicare certification by the end of last year. Without it, they can't treat Medicare patients. And the facilities needed to be open to get that certification. So construction halted at 45 hospitals as the New Year arrived. Work on countless others will never start, having been effectively banned by ObamaCare. This will limit competition in...

a superlative idea! Let's throw thousands of construction workers out of work and make it harder to access quality medical care at the same time. Man, those Democrats are 6 times brilliant, eh? The Weekly Standard: Under the headline, "Construction Stops at Physician Hospitals," Politico reports today that "Physician Hospitals of America says that construction had to stop at 45 hospitals nationwide or they would not be able to bill Medicare for treatments." Stopping construction at doctor-owned hospitals might not seem like the best way to boost the economy or to promote greater access and choice in health care, but...

January 04, 2011 Obamacare stops construction at 45 physician owned hospitals nationwideRick Moran What a superlative idea! Let's throw thousands of construction workers out of work and make it harder to access quality medical care at the same time. Man, those Democrats are 6 times brilliant, eh? The Weekly Standard: Under the headline, "Construction Stops at Physician Hospitals," Politico reports today that "Physician Hospitals of America says that construction had to stop at 45 hospitals nationwide or they would not be able to bill Medicare for treatments." Stopping construction at doctor-owned hospitals might not seem like the best way to...

Physician Hospitals of America says that construction had to stop at 45 hospitals nationwide or they would not be able to bill Medicare for treatments." Stopping construction at doctor-owned hospitals might not seem like the best way to boost the economy or to promote greater access and choice in health care, but that exactly what Obamacare is doing. "Section 6001 of the health care law effectively bans new physician-owned hospitals (POHs) from starting up, and it keeps existing ones from expanding." American Hospital Association ... the AHA, along with Sen. [Max] Baucus (D-MT) and Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA), are responsible...

Feds asked to ensure Catholic hospitals follow lawThe American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday asked federal health officials to ensure that Catholic hospitals provide emergency reproductive care to pregnant women. By Rob Stein The Washington Post Originally published Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 10:00 PM The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Wednesday asked federal health officials to ensure that Catholic hospitals provide emergency reproductive care to pregnant women, saying the refusal by religiously affiliated hospitals to provide abortion and other services is an increasing problem. In a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the ACLU...

Interesting piece on managing wait-times in Canada: On Monday, Auditor General Jim McCarter released his annual report which found that despite putting an extra $200 million into shortening emergency room wait times over the last two years, "significant province-wide progress has not yet been made." "Complaints about overcrowding and delays in hospital emergency rooms have persisted for years," McCarter told a news conference on Monday. Emergency room waits for people with serious conditions sometimes reached 12 hours or more, the report said. That is far greater than the province's 8-hour wait time target, the report found. And for emergency patients...

Which do you think is less expensive, not to mention preferable: a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's disease and diabetes, or caring for people with these diseases? Wouldn't it be better medical and public policy to direct more resources toward finding a cure for diseases that cost a lot to treat than to rely on a government insurance program, such as Obamacare, which seeks mainly to help pay the bills for people after they become ill? Isn't the answer obvious? Apparently not to many politicians trapped in an old paradigm that focuses too much on hospitals, doctors and medicines and too...

Senior IDF officials were among those at a conference on humanitarian medicine held this week in Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. IDF commanders and soldiers were there to hear about recent developments and challenges in the IDF. Brigadier-General Nitzan Alon, Commander of the Judea and Samaria Division, said Israel had faced a unique humanitarian challenge in recent years. When a terror war broke out in 2000 and PA terrorists began attacking Israel more frequently than ever, Israel was forced to limit PA Arabs' access to Israeli cities, he said, leading to a situation in which PA Arabs were no longer...