Bill Walczak, who once served as president of Carney Hospital, explains - and notes that a private company stationed an ambulance at the now closed hospital over the weekend, because people who needed ER care kept driving up.
healthcare
City Councilors Ed Flynn (South Boston, South End, Chinatown, downtown) and Erin Murphy (at large) yesterday sounded an alarm about a for-profit company's plans to open an urgent-care clinic less than a block away from the South Boston Community Health Center on West Broadway, warning that the new clinic could skim patients with disposable income away, threatening the health center's long-term viability and its commitment to caring for people who couldn't otherwise afford to see a doctor. Read more.
A woman whose father died at Brigham and Women's Hospital after a heart transplant in 2017 blames the hospital and the as yet unknown company that made the water-filtration system the hospital used in the cardiac unit where he was supposed to be recovering. Read more.
The American Prospect reports, in hindsight, it should have been easy to figure out how Steward Health Care would begin circling the drain more than a decade ago. Key point:
For ten years, the hospital chain, which originated as an agglomeration of nun-operated Boston-area neighborhood hospitals known as Caritas Christi, was owned by the private equity firm Cerberus, which extracted more than $800 million in excess of its investment out of the hospitals, then left during the pandemic.
The Globe reports the financial crisis at the company that owns St. Elizabeth's - and Carney Hospital in Dorchester - can have direct patient impact, like when a woman is bleeding internally but the hospital no longer had the embolization coils that might have stopped the bleeding because it couldn't pay for them, and she has to be transferred across the city to another hospital, but by then it's too late and she dies.
Draganfly, a Saskatoon-based drone maker, announced this week that Mass General Brigham will use its cargo drones to get around the Boston area's notorious traffic by delivering to its home patients from the air.
The company makes drones with drop-down winches and "quick-release delivery boxes" that can whiz around with up to 67 pounds of stuff, driven by pilots sitting in a command center.
Researchers who looked at data from Massachusetts Planned Parenthood clinics from 2018 through October, 2022 found a small but significant increase in the number of people coming into Massachusetts for abortions following the Supreme Court Dobbs decision in June, 2022, even though we don't border any states where abortion is now banned.
Gov. Healey announced today that that Massachusetts health-care providers have started stockpiling mifepristone in advance of potential judicial action to ban its sale, despite 20 years of use showing its safer than many other drugs, including Viagra, but nobody is talking about denying men a right to erections. Read more.
As expected, a federal judge in Texas overturned FDA approval of mifepristone. Gov. Maura Healey said tonight it will remain available in Massachusetts: Read more.
Ryan Grannan-Doll reports:
Just tried to pickup meds at CVS in Newtonville. Pharmacist told me CVS computer network is down NATIONWIDE. No Rx filling or selling. No timeline for fix.
GBH reports the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center has set up a patient advocate office in response to allegations of poor medical treatment at the facility.
MIT News reports on efforts at the Institute to study the human microbiome - all the zillions of microorganisms that cohabit in your body - to see if there are ways to improve human health. One example: Microorganisms living in the digestive tract have been linked to several diseases, including Type 2 diabetes, several cancers and Alzheimer's.
WBUR reports on efforts by Black residents at Mass. General, Brigham and Women's and Boston Medical Center to boost both minority employment and do more about health disparities between white and minority patients.
As he has done for several days now, Gov. Baker used part of his daily press conference today to urge people with non-Covid-19 health issues to call their doctors or 911. But this time, he was joined by executives at three hospitals, who reported many people are trying to wait out symptoms at home, which means they eventually come into the hospital far sicker - and sometimes beyond help. Read more.
WBUR reports on Mass. General's plans, which includes two new 12-story buildings and 450 single-patient rooms.
The Globe reports Brigham and Women's Hospital has offered voluntary buyouts to 1,600 workers.
Separately, the hospital and parent Partners Healthcare have agreed to pay the federal government $10 million to resolve fraud allegations involving "manipulated and falsified information" used by three Brigham doctors to obtain federal stem-cell research grants.
A few days after Partners HealthCare announced plans to subsume Mass. Eye and Ear, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Lahey Clinic are announcing plans to merge, the Boston Business Journal reports.
The cancer center reports it now has less than a day's worth of O-negative blood and is looking for folks with that type who could make a donation.
Seems Steward Health Care didn't like what it was hearing about a Globe story coming out this Sunday focusing on one family's struggles with a mentally ill member who received care at several Steward facilities so it sued the Globe and the patient to try to get an advance look at the article and release the patient's medical records.
Steward lost and now it's gotten lots of people interested in just what the story will say.
Hopkinton's only drugstore is suing CVS, alleging the national pharmacy giant is trying to muscle into the town by cutting off a key part of its business.
In a lawsuit filed this week in US District Court, Hopkinton Drug alleges the CVS wing that administers pharmacy benefits for many employers is refusing to do any more business with the store as part of an "unlawful civil conspiracy" with the CVS wing that runs retail outlets, in an attempt to break into the Hopkinton pharmacy market.
- Page 1
- ››