Insurers Oppose Boston Children’s Proposed Expansion
In their bid to block the plan, some insurers within the state are arguing that the building project would drive up medical spending. In other state hospital news, Nassau University Medical Center on Long Island will unveil its new $19 million primary care unit. Meanwhile, in Florida, a newspaper investigation finds the state's mental hospitals are plagued by violence.
Boston Globe:
Children’s Hospital Expansion Opposed By Health Insurers
Health insurers are making a late bid to derail a plan by Boston Children’s Hospital to expand, urging state regulators to reject the building project because it would drive up medical spending. The $1 billion proposal by Children’s to add an 11-story tower and 71 beds to its Longwood Medical Area campus would boost the hospital’s market share in the state, the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans said Monday in a letter to Public Health Commissioner Monica Bharel. (Dayal McCluskey, 10/3)
The Wall Street Journal:
Long Island’s Nassau University Medical Center Opens New Primary-Care Unit
Long Island’s Nassau University Medical Center is ready to open a new $19 million primary-care unit Tuesday as it looks to trim unnecessary visits to its bursting emergency room. The public hospital in the Nassau County community of East Meadow, N.Y., has about 100,000 emergency-room visits every year. Officials say the primary-care center, with its 55 treatment rooms, could cut emergency-room visits by 25%. (de Avila, 10/3)
Health News Florida:
Report: Florida's Mental Hospitals Still Violent, Deadly
The staff and patients inside Florida's mental hospitals remain victims of preventable violence, according to a newspaper investigation. The Tampa Bay Times, following up on a yearlong investigation the newspaper conducted with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2015, reported Sunday that the state’s mental hospitals are still violent and deadly. The newspapers spent more than a year documenting life in Florida’s six largest mental hospitals, showing how $100 million in budget cuts had led to a doubling in violent incidents and at least 15 deaths. (10/3)
And The Washington Post reports —
The Washington Post:
Transgender Boy’s Mom Sues Hospital, Saying He ‘Went Into Spiral’ After Staff Called Him A Girl
Just shy of his 15th birthday and the promise of testosterone treatments to help make him a man, Kyler Prescott was dead. Overcome with anxiety and depression, the Southern California teen committed suicide in May 2015, his mother said. In the weeks before his death, Kyler had been treated for “suicidal ideation,” Katharine Prescott said: She had taken him to the emergency room at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego, which has a Gender Management Clinic to treat children with gender dysphoria and other related issues. (Bever, 10/3)