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Recently I wrote about the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada wanting to do mandatory overtime but a memo was leaked. The staff rebelled and now the CNO has reversed her position and will allow voluntary overtime.
Trouble at Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospitals in Gallup, New Mexico. The staff wants the management service Community Hospital Corporation out. They are complaining regarding working conditions since Community took over. The staff is leaving and Community says it is due to higher pay elsewhere but a survey says it is due to mismanagement.
In a huge screw up Tufts Health wanted to bid on a Medicaid contract. They waited too long and missed the deadline by two minutes. The contract was for approximately $400 million. Stupidity reigns supreme there.
UPMC will pay the whopping sum of between $10 and $20 to 66,000 employees for having their personal information stolen from the hospital and sold on the dark web. Any employee who actually had his/her information used will receive up to $5000 for out of pocket loss plus $250 for inconvenience. They will also pay $1 million in attorney fees and $7000 to the named plaintiffs.
In a major expose the huge exodus of physicians from North Carolina's Mission Health since being taken over by HCA Healthcare has been bared. Since 2019, the Ashville Watchdog has identified 223 physicians that have left the hospital. HCA refused to say how many physicians they have on staff. Of those over 100 have moved out of the area and the rest have joined other practices in the area. Some of them are still on the staff of the hospital but no longer employed by them. The overriding reason seems to be the corporate practice of medicine versus care for the patient. Physicians now coming on staff are just being hired to fill gaps, according to the article. The ED is now run by TeamHealth which is known for replacing physicians with mid levels.
As a follow to the preceding story, the story of Dr. Ray Brovont at Kansas City, Missouri , Overland Park Regional Medical Center is a perfect segue. He was a former army physician who became the head of the ED at the hospital. The hospital had a policy with their Code Blues the the ED physician would go to the Code leaving the ED uncovered. He found this unacceptable and attempted to get this changed internally. He failed and then since the hospital is a trauma center reported the practice outside the hospital and he got fired by his employer Emcare, a division of TeamHealth. He sued and won $26 million. As an employee he had no right of peer review at the hospital. He also could not work at the other local hospitals sins Emcare covered them as well. One might ask how Emcare, a corporate entity can control 540 facility EDs in 45 states, many with Corporate Practice of Medicine laws. Easy, have a physician as the owner of the subsidiaries. Meet Dr. Gregory Byrne. He is a 70 year old ED physician in Southlake, Texas, who is the front man for 300 emergency medicine practices in 10 states but has never been to them.
CarolinaEast Medical Center in New Bern, North Carolina, has found a way to get terrible publicity. They examined a women in labor and sent her home. After returning home she realized the baby was coming and she and her husband started to go to a different hospital when the baby said it's my time. The baby was delivered by the husband in the car and when 911 arrived they took her and the baby to the same hospital that she had left earlier. The mom has shamed the hospital publicly and maybe they will change their criteria for admitting patients in labor depending on the situation. Top
A JAMA report states the physicians still spend 1.84 hours a day of menial documentation tasks outside of work hours. This is done mainly for billing and if one wonders why physicians ae having burnout and leaving the profession, look no farther. Top
DISCLAIMER: Although this article is updated periodically, it reflects the author's point of view at the time of publication. Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice. Readers should consult with their own legal counsel before acting on any of the information presented.