This week’s vetoes by Gov. Nathan Deal included a little-noticed bill related to Medicaid. House Bill 489 would have barred the state from paying a contingency fee to a contractor to recover Medicaid overpayments to doctors and hospitals. Implementing the bill would have put Georgia’s Medicaid program in conflict with federal law, Deal said in his…
Georgia’s largest health insurer will peg its regular increases in hospitals’ payments to the quality of care they provide. WellPoint, the parent company of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, is replacing its system of paying hospitals annual increases with a method that features rewards. Under the new method, a hospital will get an annual…
Georgia would lose more than 40 percent of its federal funding for Medicaid over the next 10 years under a Republican plan to repeal health reform and shift Medicaid to a block grant program, according to a report released Tuesday. Nationally, projected federal spending on Medicaid for the 10-year period 2012 to 2021 would fall…
A long-running, hostile acquisition attempt has ended as Community Health Systems abandoned its unsolicited multibillion-dollar bid to acquire Tenet Healthcare. A completed merger would have created the largest for-profit hospital chain in the nation. But Tenet repeatedly fought the takeover, and its board Monday again refused to negotiate with Community Health. A deal would have…
It is as predictable as high pollen counts and thunderstorms in the spring. Every few years Georgia — and the rest of the country, for that matter — experiences a severe shortage of nurses. Only this time it’s different, experts say. This time there are no easy solutions — no way to import nurses from other countries to practice…
Patient safety has been a top-shelf theme in health care for years. But alarming data continue to demonstrate potential dangers of a health care experience. The safety numbers include: A study published in the journal Health Affairs in April found that on average, one in three patients admitted to a hospital suffers a medical error…
After a contentious debate, the General Assembly in 2008 approved a plan that eventually would allow a $150 million cancer treatment center in the metro Atlanta area. The controversial bill created a loophole in the state’s certificate-of-need law that regulates the construction of health care facilities. The legislation had been opposed by, among others, the…
The Federal Trade Commission and Georgia’s attorney general have challenged the proposed Phoebe Putney Health System acquisition of a rival Albany hospital as anti-competitive. The FTC voted 5-0 to request an injunction of the merger of Phoebe Putney with Palmyra Medical Center, owned by HCA. And the federal agency filed a joint complaint with the…
The hospital consolidation trend in metro Atlanta took another turn Friday with Henry Medical Center announcing it would enter partnership talks with Piedmont Healthcare. The Henry Medical announcement was highly anticipated, with Emory Healthcare and Piedmont the top suitors for the Stockbridge hospital. The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports that the options for the talks will…
U.S. News & World Report has produced its first ranking of hospitals by metro area, and Emory University Hospital came out No. 1 in Atlanta. The publication’s ranking of Emory nationally in 11 medical specialties helped push it to the top spot in metro Atlanta. U.S. News is widely known for its rankings of colleges…