Crowded Emergency Departments Pose Greater Risks for Patients with Heart Attacks
from Science Daily
 Patients with heart attacks and other forms of chest pain are three to five times more likely to experience serious complications after hospital admission when they are treated in a crowded emergency department, according to a new study published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine. More
Study: Medical Bills Underlie 60 Percent of U.S. Bankruptcies
from the Portland Tribune
Medical bills are behind more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, U.S. researchers reported last week in a report they said demonstrates that health care reform is on the wrong track. More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.
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Congress Urged to Boost Hospital Access to Capital
from AHA News Now
Congress can help hospitals manage their increasingly costly bond obligations and the poor economy’s impact on their operations and services through a federally backed municipal bond liquidity and reinsurance program and improvements to the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) Section 242 Hospital Mortgage Insurance construction loan program, a hospital executive recently told the House Financial Services Committee.
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Health Care "Gap" Continues for Minority, Poor Americans
from the Atlanta Journal Constitution
Minority and low-income Americans are much more likely to suffer from a chronic, debilitating illness than whites and are far less likely to have the kind of coverage that would ensure quality care, according to a new report issued Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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Relief for Emergency Room Overcrowding Passes California Assembly
from the California Chronicle
California Assemblymember Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) announced that Assembly Bill 911, legislation that will significantly reduce dangerous overcrowding levels in California emergency rooms and would help hospitals plan for and respond to public health crises like the recent worldwide outbreak of the swine flu passed the State Assembly.
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Recession Forces Hospitals to Cut Back on Superbug Safety, Survey Says
from MSNBC
Even as the threat from drug-resistant germs continues to rise and a novel swine flu virus sweeps the country, U.S. hospitals are cutting back on staff and resources to battle potentially deadly patient infections. More than 40 percent of nearly 2,000 hospital infection workers responding to a professional association survey reported being hit by budget cuts in the past 18 months, mostly because of the troubled economy.
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Hospitals Work to Cut ER Wait Times
from the Temple Daily Telegram
In light of the release of a report by the United States Government Accountability Office - that finds emergency patients who need to be seen in one to 14 minutes are being seen in twice that timeframe, or 37 minutes - members of the American College of Emergency Physicians are urging Congress to address the needs of emergency patients as it takes up health care reform. “Nearly 120 million people are treated in our nation’s emergency departments annually, and we expect that number to climb with each passing year,” said Dr. Nick Jouriles, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
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Medicaid Reaches for Web
from Government Health IT
After decades of patching, tweaking and reprogramming their Reagan-era claims processing and administrative systems, a wave of states are finally starting to upgrade their Medicaid Management Information Systems (MMISs) -- and the timing couldn’t be better.
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