Latest California Healthline Stories
Global Healthcare Exchange Tests Its Online Supply Purchasing System
Global Healthcare Exchange Inc., the online medical exchange launched last year by suppliers such as Johnson & Johnson, Baxter and GE Medical Systems, has signed up 200 hospitals nationwide to try out the system and expects to begin distributing its software to individual users within the next few weeks, the Denver Post reports.
Bush Expected to Name Scully as HCFA Administrator
President Bush is expected “soon” to announce plans to nominate hospital lobbyist Thomas Scully as HCFA administrator, the New York Times reports.
GOP Attempts to Overturn Clinton Ergonomics Rules
Republicans in the Senate are preparing to vote this week to overturn “highly controversial” ergonomics regulations issued in “the last months” of the Clinton administration, the Washington Post reports.
Judge Reduces Charges Against Medical Marijuana Offenders
Saying that jail “would not be an appropriate place” for marijuana “activist” Steve Kubby, a Superior Court judge in Placer County reduced Kubby’s felony drug convictions for use of medical marijuana to misdemeanors and dismissed all remaining marijuana-related charges against him, the Sacramento Bee reports.
Healthy Families Dropout Rate Growing
Children are dropping out of Healthy Families, California’s CHIP program, “almost as fast” as they enroll, in spite of “intense efforts” to cover all eligible children, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
Tax Cut Would ‘Leave No Room’ for Rx Benefit, Dems Say
Senate Democrats have “stepp[ed] up their argument” that President Bush’s 10-year, $1.6 trillion tax cut package would “leave no room” in the FY 2002 budget for a prescription drug benefit under Medicare, CongressDaily reports.
PacifiCare Stock Falls in Wake of State Regulatory Action
Shares of Santa Ana-based PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. tumbled $8.22 to $30.91 last Friday after investors learned that the California Department of Managed Health Care had imposed regulatory penalties on the HMO for making late payments to thousands of doctors and hospitals, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Completion of Merced Hospital Merger Set for March 31
Pending state Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s (D) approval, the proposed merger of Sutter Merced Medical Center and Catholic Healthcare West’s Mercy Hospital will be complete by a March 31 “target date,” according to Mercy Hospital CEO John Headding, the Modesto Bee reports.
Web Site Provides Online Second Opinions from ‘Leading’ Oncologists
MDExpert.com allows patients and physicians to obtain second opinions online from 200 “cancer experts,” the AP/San Francisco Chronicle reports.
IOM Report Urges ‘Overhaul’ of U.S. Health System
The new Institute of Medicine report released yesterday says that “America’s health system is a tangled, highly fragmented web that often wastes resources by providing unnecessary services and duplicating efforts,” and the time is ripe for a “major overhaul.”