By: Lisa Chedekel Connecticut hospitals reported fewer numbers of patients killed or seriously injured by falls or perforations during surgery or suffering from severe pressure ulcers in 2014 than in 2013, but the incidence of…
By: Lisa Chedekel All but one of Connecticut’s acute-care hospitals will lose Medicare reimbursement in 2015-16 as a penalty for high readmissions of discharged patients, new federal data show. The penalties against 28 hospitals mean…
By: Lisa Chedekel A state lawmaker who is pushing public health and hospital officials to make data on hospital infection rates available to consumers, in the wake of a C-HIT story, says he is “encouraged”…
By: Lisa Chedekel Connecticut hospitals reported record numbers of patients killed or seriously injured by hospital errors in 2013, with large increases in the numbers of falls, medication mistakes and perforations during surgical procedures, a…
By: Lisa Chedekel Connecticut’s acute-care hospitals saw gains from their operations tumble 35 percent in the last fiscal year, with seven of 29 hospitals reporting operating losses, according to a new state report. While hospitals…
By: Lisa Chedekel State health inspectors visiting Stamford Hospital in late 2012 turned up several infection-control violations, including the improper drying and storage of endoscopes, instruments used to look inside the body. An inspection of…
By: Cara Rosner Ninety-six percent of veterans awaiting appointments at VA medical centers in Connecticut are being seen within 30 days, new data show, with Connecticut performing slightly better than the national average. At Connecticut…
By: Susan Jaffe Starting Wednesday, a new state law requires Connecticut hospitals to tell all patients when they are being kept in the hospital for observation instead of being admitted and to warn them about…
Payments from pharmaceutical companies touch hundreds of thousands of doctors. The 17 companies we’ve tracked spent $1.4 billion in 2013 alone. Here are our top five takeaways from following all that money. (David Sleight/ProPublica) This…
By: Jennifer Kaylin and Lisa Chedekel Hospital administrators in Connecticut who have been involved in the unprecedented streak of mergers and consolidations often tout the financial benefits and efficiencies of such moves. But as the…
By: Magaly Olivero Undocumented immigrants are expected to make up a larger share of Connecticut’s uninsured population next year, putting new financial pressures on safety-net hospitals that provide emergency care to everyone, state and national…
By: Lisa Chedekel More than two-thirds of Connecticut hospitals will face Medicare penalties for lagging clinical-care measures in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, with smaller hospitals including Johnson Memorial, Windham and New Milford…
By: Kate Farrish In more than half of Connecticut’s emergency rooms, the waiting time to see a health-care provider exceeds the national average of 28 minutes – a problem that experts say could get worse,…
By: Lisa Chedekel Medicare patients had more than 600,000 hospital stays in 2012 that lasted three nights or more but did not qualify them for follow-up nursing home care, according to a new report by…
By: Lisa Chedekel Twenty-four of Connecticut’s 31 hospitals will face Medicare penalties in the fiscal year starting in October, in the second round of the federal government’s push to reduce the number of patients readmitted…
Written By: Lisa Chedekel Connecticut fared second-worst in the country in the percentage of hospitals hit with federal penalties for selected quality-of-care measures and in the overall rate of loss of Medicare reimbursements associated with…
Written by Lisa Chedekel Twenty-three Connecticut hospitals will forfeit Medicare funds in the next year under a new federal policy that penalizes hospitals with significant numbers of patients who are readmitted within a month of…
“This is one area where market forces don’t seem to be working, but a totally neutral second opinion might. HCA, the largest for-profit hospital chain in the United States with 163 facilities is being accused of…
The aging of the population brings its own set of medical problems and foremost among these is the increased likelihood of disability due to diseases or other causes. Although care for the elderly and care…
Call me a curmudgeon, but is anyone else annoyed by the proliferation of hospital advertising? You literally cannot open a newspaper or turn on the radio or TV without being bombarded with advertisements for hospitals…