Fitch Sees Impact of Reform as Case-Specific
from HFMA News
Although Fitch Ratings recently revised six health insurers' rating outlooks to negative, the net effect of healthcare reform on the nonprofit acute care sector is less clear and is more likely to vary in magnitude and direction among individual hospitals and health systems. Fitch's revision of the insurers' outlooks reflects the potential financial stress of healthcare reform and results in a negative outlook for all 12 of Fitch's rated health insurance organizations. More

Emergency Department Ultrasounds: Saving Time and Lives
from Hospital News
As Congress heads into its annual August recess without having achieved a consensus on healthcare reform, a new Zogby Interactive survey finds a majority of Americans are evenly split on the basic structure of proposed reform. More

ER Docs Should Trust Their Gut Instincts, Study Finds
from DOTmed
Emergency physicians should trust their "gut instincts" when evaluating patients who report chest pain, says Abhinav Chandra, M.D., who is director of acute care research and clinical evaluation at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Chandra told DOTmed News that an ER doctor's gut instincts about a heart patient are usually accurate -- and that's not just a gut feeling--he set up a study to prove his theory. More

Research Provides New Insights into Heart Attack
from TheHill.com
The health insurance industry is fighting back against intensified Democratic attacks and vowing to “correct the record” on its role in healthcare reform, its chief lobbyist said Tuesday. More

Medicines Top Source of Kids' Poisonings
from Yahoo! News
The leading cause of accidental poisonings among American children can be found in the family medicine cabinet, a new government report shows. Each year in the United States, more than 71,000 children aged 18 and younger are seen in emergency rooms for unintentional overdoses of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, the researchers found. More

40 Percent of Emergency Room Visits Billed to Public Insurance, Says Report
from MedNews
More than 40 percent of the 120 million visits that Americans made to hospital emergency departments in 2006 were billed to public insurance, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. More

Hospital Cameras Help Battered Women
from WCBSTV.com
When it gets too noisy on the second-floor cardiac care unit at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center, a traffic light on the wall near the nurse station turns red and the overhead lights dim. That signal means the staff needs to quiet down. The device, called a Yacker Tracker, measures sound levels. St. Joe's installed it in May as part of a broad effort to dampen the din. More