Tens of thousands of UnitedHealthcare members will now face higher out-of-pocket fees if they go to Wellstar Health System hospitals and doctors. The contract between the two organizations ended Sunday without a new agreement. An estimated 80,000 United members will be affected. Payment for medical services is the sticking point. United says the Wellstar demands…
For the second time in recent months, insurance giant UnitedHealthcare is mired in a contract squabble with a large Georgia health care system. And as before, the battle to hammer out an agreement that both sides can accept is coming down to the wire. About 80,000 of the insurer’s members would face being out of…
A recent surge in demand for powerful Covid antibody drugs has generated concerns about supply shortages in states that are heavy users of the treatment, including Georgia. About 70 percent of these lab-created drugs are being used in the Southeast. With that uneven distribution, federal health officials recently decided to take over supplies and allocate…
The state’s Covid cases and hospitalizations have dipped over the past week, Georgia health officials have reported. But that drop isn’t relieving the pressure on the front lines of hospitals — both smaller facilities and large urban centers. Take Appling Healthcare, which operates a rural hospital of 34 beds in Baxley, in southeast Georgia. The…
Georgia hospital officials were scrambling Friday to gauge the impact of President Biden’s order for health care workers to get vaccinated for Covid-19. The mandate would apply to health care facilities that treat Medicare and Medicaid patients – virtually all hospitals – as well as dialysis centers, surgery centers and home care operations. (Nursing homes…
The number of confirmed Covid deaths in Georgia has now surpassed 20,000, state officials said Friday. In addition, there are more than 3,000 “probable’’ deaths from Covid, according to the state Public Health website. Georgia’s first confirmed Covid death was in March 2020. “It is tragic but not surprising that we have surpassed this grim…
The state has broken its record for Covid patient hospitalizations, and has reached 5,880, a Public Health spokeswoman said Tuesday. The previous mark was set Jan. 12 at 5,814 hospitalized virus patients during the third Covid surge, according to Nancy Nydam, the spokeswoman. (The agency’s website Tuesday shows a lower hospitalization figure.) Meanwhile, several other…
“It feels like it just doesn’t end.’’ That’s how Damien Scott, CEO of Emanuel Medical Center in rural southeast Georgia, described the current covid wave and its impact on his hospital and community. All six ICU beds at the Swainsboro hospital Tuesday morning were filled with very sick virus patients, with five on ventilators. Several…
The current covid onslaught may be the worst of the four virus surges in one crucial way: The effect on hospital employee morale. Leaders of Georgia hospital systems say the latest covid-19 wave has been very difficult for nurses and other clinical staff partly because it emerged at a time of wide availability of vaccines…
Metro Atlanta hospital systems are uniting to deliver a public message about the increasingly grim picture on the COVID front lines. Representatives from the Wellstar, Piedmont, Emory and Grady systems – often competitors in non-pandemic times – along with those from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Gainesville-based Northeast Georgia Health System, will address the media Thursday morning…