Free Republic

The state levied nearly $13,000 in fines against two Spokane nursing homes this week, after investigators found lapses in medical care, verbal abuse from nurses and neglect of patients. At Sunshine Gardens Nursing Home, a man died Sept. 16, three days after he first complained of chest pain. The nursing home did not send the man to the hospital despite his well-documented history of cardiac problems, according to a state report. Nor did it properly administer medication to manage his pain. The state assessed a $3,000 fine to Sunshine Gardens, an 84-bed home at 10410 E. Ninth Ave., for failing...

Though it may be years before businesses regularly track all supplies moving through their supply chains with radio-frequency identification, the technology has gotten a big boost from the federal government that could speed its adoption. The Department of Defense issued a mandate early this month requiring all of its suppliers to use passive RFID tags on the cases and pallets they deliver to its various branches by January 2005. The Defense Department isn't the first to require that suppliers support RFID--Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has told its top 100 suppliers to use RFID tags on cases and pallets by the same...

An apparent shift toward more institutional care of foster kids has some child-welfare advocates worried that America is straining against 100 years of research. These are no angry behemoths hulking on downtown streets or rising on the hills of distant railroad towns. Often, today's American orphanages look so unlike their Dickensian predecessors that you could almost believe the brightly colored cottages were sets for some Disney fairy tale. The children, too, seem distant from the privations of old. They have food, clothes, and a measure of stability - most even have parents, beyond the wilds of the foster-care system. Look...