Hospitals

Drugmakers offer medicines at a bargain price to hospitals that treat large numbers of poor patients. Hospitals sometimes resell the drugs at full price and make hefty profits.

Financial problems have led many hospitals to shut down completely. Georgia is issuing licenses to rural hospitals that would allow them to become nothing more than free-standing emergency rooms.

Medicare has tied incentive payments and penalties to two-dozen quality measurements, including surveys of patient satisfaction and death rates. More than 1,200 hospitals are receiving bonuses. But more hospitals are being paid less for each Medicare patient they treat for the year that began Oct. 1.

Many health plans being offered on the New York state insurance marketplace do not include some of New York City's biggest hospitals in their networks. And across the state, many doctors say they are not yet participating in exchange plans at all.

Patients fall in just a small fraction of hospital visits. But safety experts say bad falls should be called "never events" and shouldn't ever happen inside hospitals. There's a difference of opinion over the best way to reduce hazardous falls.

A hospital in Estes Park, Colo., escaped the flood damage that affected much of the area this month. But the small hospital in the mountains now relies on a single road to evacuate critical patients. A bad snowstorm could stop traffic and ground helicopters, leaving the hospital isolated.

Every victim who arrived at a hospital alive survived the attack. But hospitals say the experience also revealed room for improvement, and they're about to share the lessons they learned at a national conference in Washington, D.C.

When is an inpatient in the hospital not an inpatient in the hospital? When that patient is on observation status. Patients who are termed on observation can have trouble getting Medicare to pay if they need to go to a nursing home. The practice has sparked lawsuits and legislation.

Local officials in Washington D.C., are on the verge of approving two high-tech radiation facilities for treating cancer at a total cost of $153 million. The treatment these hospitals would offer costs twice as much as standard radiation, but hasn't been shown to work any better for most cancers.

Hospitals are partnering with pharmacies to keep discharged patients from returning too soon. Walgreens, for one, is helping hospitals to manage patients' medications after they go home.