With their previous deal expiring, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia and Tenet Health System reached agreement on a new contract early Wednesday. The pact means that Texas-based Tenet’s five Georgia hospitals — Atlanta Medical Center, North Fulton Hospital, South Fulton Medical Center, Spalding Regional Medical Center and Sylvan Grove Hospital — will remain…
The clock is ticking down in another hospital vs. insurer contract dispute in metro Atlanta, and patients are caught in the middle. With less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 deadline, the contract battle between Tenet Healthcare and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia shows no signs of resolution. If a new contract is not reached…
Emory and St. Joseph’s have closed their partnership deal. The two Atlanta health care systems announced Tuesday that they have formed a joint operating company, effective Monday. The arrangement gives Emory Healthcare a majority ownership of St. Joseph’s Hospital, with a 51/49 percentage split. St. Joseph’s will retain involvement in governance of the joint operating…
Doug Wojcieszak lost his brother to medical errors. His parents ultimately won a malpractice award, but no physician apologized or admitted a mistake, Wojcieszak writes in a new GHN Commentary. “Often, doctors don’t talk about mistakes because they are afraid of our legal system,’’ says Wojcieszak, founder of Sorry Works!, a leading advocacy organization for…
A recent government inspection of Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital found some building improvements needed to be made at the facility, including an upgrade of its fire sprinklers. Blocks away from the main campus, a Grady mental health outpatient clinic on Auburn Avenue has experienced its own structural problems: an often malfunctioning system for air conditioning…
Here is GHN’s list of the Top 10 Georgia health care stories of 2011: 1. Atlanta federal appeals court rules on health reform The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law’s requirement for individuals to buy insurance, though it upheld the rest of the law. This decision virtually assured that the U.S….
A new group of coaches is coming to the Atlanta area, but their work won’t focus on athletics. Starting next year, hundreds of Atlanta-area Medicare patients will each be assigned a ‘‘coach’’ to help guide their transition from hospital care to living at home. The goal is to prevent these patients from being readmitted to…
A federal appeals court in Atlanta has ruled in favor of a hospital authority’s acquisition of an Albany hospital – a deal fiercely opposed on antitrust grounds by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC had argued that the proposed $195 million acquisition of Palmyra Medical Center by the Albany-Dougherty County Hospital Authority, originally announced a…
The dash by Atlanta health systems toward forming new partnerships continued Monday with the announcement of an affiliation between Emory Healthcare and MinuteClinic, which operates retail clinics in CVS/pharmacy stores. The initiative underscores a new emphasis on retail care as health reform and the private market drive new ideas for providing medical services in an…
What Georgia city has the most-satisfied hospital patients? A Kaiser Health News analysis of Medicare survey data found that the Rome region’s hospitals have produced the happiest patients in the state. The hospitals in the northwest Georgia city’s market performed well nationally, ranking 12th among 295 regional hospital markets in the United States. The rest…