Category: Hospitals

Cure and Outrage Coexist Comfortably in American Medicine

The medicine that we are too willing to swallow.

It has only been a lack of time, never of material, that limits the number of entries in this column. (Are any of you out there interested in writing about something?) One has only to open the local newspaper or watch any news program to stumble across things that should cause our ears to perk up, if not make our blood boil. Last Friday’s Courier-Journal provides a typical example. There were no fewer than five different news articles that were exactly on point for issues we have been writing about this past year. The articles highlighted the massive squandering of money and flesh by a broken healthcare system, a substantial risk of the most commonly touted screening procedure, an example of the unconscionable bills that hospitals are willing to present to their patients, a Kentucky hospital being sued for massive but lucrative overtreatment, and a report of still one more widely used treatment for Alzheimer’s syndrome that didn’t work. There seems to be no limit to the amount of abuse the American public is willing to take from the healthcare industry that is supposed to serve them. Fortunately for me, I don’t have much hair to pull out anymore. Continue reading “Cure and Outrage Coexist Comfortably in American Medicine”

UofL Surgeons Sign Affiliation Agreement with Norton Hospital.

What does this mean?

Yesterday I received the following eMail announcement from University Surgical Associates (USA), the independent private practice corporation of part of the Department of Surgery of the University of Louisville. I think it was sent to me as a patient rather than a doctor or policy wonk. I received similar communications in the past, such as an announcement that USA had finally renewed a contract with Humana to see that insurer’s patients again. It was that break-up a few years ago that led the University to switch health insurance for its employees from Humana to United. (UofL supports the private clinical practices of its faculty in other ways too!) The present notice also appeared on a Department of Surgery website, but not yet on the Norton or the main UofL websites. Read the release here. Continue reading “UofL Surgeons Sign Affiliation Agreement with Norton Hospital.”

University Hospital Cuts Funding to UofL for Teaching: Or Did It?

UofL plays chicken with state and local officials.

[Addendum, June 14. On reading this morning’s printed report in the Courier-Journal, I clearly misinterpreted the University’s motivation.  This was no hat-in-hand response to community criticism, but a continuation of the threatening and even bullying behaviors of the past.]

This evening, the Courier-Journal reported on its website that at a earlier meeting with its editorial board, officials of the Medical School and presumably its Hospital, said that they will “cut in half the money they give the University of Louisville Health Sciences Center, ” from $11 to $5.5 Million. They follow up with an additional statement that perhaps next year they might decrease that amount even more!  At the time I was interviewed, I initially [and incorrectly] assumed that the University felt compelled to make some  reduction in response to criticism from the community about its funding of research at a time when it was crying poor!  It was increasingly hard to swallow the Hospital’s claim of having not enough money for indigent care when they were giving in excess of $12 million to research every year! Continue reading “University Hospital Cuts Funding to UofL for Teaching: Or Did It?”

Final Meeting of UofL Ad Hoc Hospital Operations Review Committee

Presentation to Hospital Employees and the Public

Ad Hoc Committee Members on Stage

Because the presentation was essentially identical to that of May 9th, I refer you to my discussion of that meeting which is still on point, and to my final comments in that article which I still hold true.

This final presentation was held in the auditorium of the hospital. The room was appropriately well filled with hospital employees. These were the people who worked with and were interviewed by the consultants, Dixon Hughes Goodman. (DHG). I can’t say there were many members of the general public, if at all. I recognized two other members of the press.  A handout with most the slides used is available on the KHPI website (4.8 MB). Some slides, including financial trend information, were used in the presentation but not included in the handout and are available here. An earlier slide comparing University Hospital market share with that of other Louisville hospitals was not presented at all. Continue reading “Final Meeting of UofL Ad Hoc Hospital Operations Review Committee”