Aug 4, 2010 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Small employers begin dropping private health coverage and pay penalty to state
Massachusetts’s health reform program—touted as a model that incorporates many features of the new federal health legislation—continues be generate controversy. Despite its success in expanding the number of state residents who now have health insurance, year-over-year cost increases are exceeding the projections used by the legislature and governor when the bill was passed in 2006.
For pathologists and clinical laboratory managers, the outcome of the Bay State’s effort to introduce a form of universal healthcare coverage bears watching. That’s because many elements of the Obamacare bill passed by Congress earlier this year are similar to the Massachusetts health reform program.
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Sep 21, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Hospitals Opening Retail Clinics to Capture Greater Market Share
Walk-in rapid medical clinics in retail stores are so popular with consumers that now hospitals want in on the action. Some of the nation’s most famous hospitals have inked agreements to put their brand on rapid clinics located inside many of the country’s largest retail and pharmacy chains.
Hospital-branded rapid clinics are inside 25 Wal-Mart stores nationally, according to a New York Times article. Additionally, Cleveland Clinic lent its brand to CVS drugstore clinics in northern Ohio, Mayo Clinic is operating Express Care clinics inside a supermarket and shopping mall in Rochester, Minnesota, and there are others. In fact, one in 10 retail clinics are now connected to a hospital, and more are planned, according to Merchant Medicine News, an online newsletter for the clinic industry.
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