Advisory group to hospitals: snap up physician practices

To protect long-term profitability, hospitals should acquire primary-care and specialty physician practices, according to the Health Care Advisory Board. Such a move guarantees hospitals control over where patients are sent for expensive procedures as well as the expenses physician-employees incur to care for their patients, something that's nearly impossible to do with independent practitioners.

Physician executive salaries outpace inflation but don't skyrocket--study

A new study compares the salaries of full-time physician executives between 1987 and 1990. It concludes that while the pay outpaced inflation, it didn't skyrocket. And it shows that perks are declining and formal contracts are more common.

Henry Ford derives profits from diversity

Henry Ford Health System has just one strategy: vertical integration. The Detroit system spent the 1980s collecting healthcare businesses to balance its full-service delivery system, and now it's filling in the gaps and streamlining operations.

Hospitals seek savings by cross-training caregivers

A program at a handful of hospitals is seeking to improve efficiency by cross-training skilled employees and staffing hospital positions according to location within the hospital instead of by specialization.

Waging war for nurses. Hospitals could become casualties as salaries escalate

There's a recruiting war going on, a pitched battle for nurses. The pitch includes lucrative sign-on and shift bonuses, which then must be matched by competing hospitals that need to keep their beds staffed. It's all leading to an explosive rise in nurse compensation, for bedside nurses and managers alike, according to the Hay-Modern Healthcare nurse compensation survey.

Hospitals are easily complying with immigration law changes

Complying with the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was predicted to be a major headache, but hospitals have found the law easy to follow and the fallout limited--if some basic steps aren't overlooked.

Virginia legal battle highlights unrest between hospitals, physicians

A bitter dispute over a proposed management-services contract has ended a decades-old business alliance between Culpepper (Va.) Memorial Hospital and Virginia Radiology Associates.

4-hydroxyandrostenedione--further clinical and extended endocrine observations

4-Hydroxyandrostenedione (4-OHA) was administered (250 mg intramuscularly 2-weekly) in a phase 2 clinical trial to 20 postmenopausal patients with advanced breast cancer, who had failed other endocrine therapy. Seven out of 18 assessable patients (39%) responded with minimal toxicity. Endocrine studies demonstrated that the drug produced significant initial falls in oestradiol and oestrone levels, but that these levels rose toward pretreatment levels as the study progressed. Sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) levels gradually fell during the study suggesting that the drug has a minor degree of androgenic activity albeit of no clinical significance. There was a transient reduction of adrenal steroid levels, which remained however within the normal range. There were no symptoms of adrenal insufficiency.

Fecal proteolytic activity in clinically normal cats and in a cat with exocrine pancreatic insufficiency

Fecal proteolytic activity determined in single samples collected on each of 3 consecutive days from each of 20 clinically normal cats ranged from 19 to 363 azocasein units (ACU)/g of feces when determined colorimetrically, using azocasein substrate, and ranged from undetectable (in 1 sample from 1 cat) to 21 mm of gel-clearing when determined using radial enzyme diffusion in agar gels containing a casein substrate. Corresponding mean 3-day values for each cat ranged from 29 to 207 ACU/g and from 5 to 16 mm, respectively. Studies of proteolytic activity remaining after treatment of fecal extracts with a specific trypsin inhibitor indicated that trypsin accounted for 0 to 77% of proteolytic activity. In a cat with exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, fecal proteolytic activity was 0, 0, and 3 ACU/g in a sample of feces collected from each of 3 consecutive days and was undetectable by use of radial enzyme diffusion. Assay of fecal proteolytic activity by use of either azocasein hydrolysis or radial enzyme diffusion allows evaluation of pancreatic function in cats, provided that several samples of feces are tested.

Nurses win RCT battle, but war isn't over

Organized nursing outflanked the American Medical Assn. on the issue of physician-controlled bedside workers in hospitals, but other battles over nursing care will be fought in the arenas of home healthcare and long-term care.