The Boston Business Journal reports the board of trustees at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has censured CEO Paul Levy over that inappropriate relationship with an underling and fined him $50,000. Also, one trustee resigned, although he wouldn't say why.'
Levy posts his apology.
Beth Israel Deaconess CIO John Halamka explains how the hospital spends $1 million a year protecting its network and records.
An assistant in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's Ear, Nose and Throat department will plead guilty to diverting $1.05 million to his own account over three years, the US Attorney's office announced today.
Federal prosecutors allege Richard Webb, 42, supplemented his salary by:
[S]tealing checks others had written to the department for services and goods, and also by obtaining fraudulent refunds for hearing aids and other items. To carry out the scheme, Webb allegedly forged signatures and deposited stolen funds into bank accounts that he controlled.
Paul Levy, CEO at Beth Israel Deaconess (and, yes, a Charlie Baker backer), explains why Deval Patrick's attempt to regulate health-insurance premiums will fail because it ignores the monopolistic overhead charged by archrival Partners HealthCare - a factor Coakley noted in a report released just two weeks ago.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CEO made news this spring when he sought employee help in making cuts to reduce the number of layoffs. Now, he reports, he asked the staff what to do should hospital finances continue to improve. Based on their advice, and if the upward trends continue, the hospital will restore pay increases on April 1.
Beth Israel Deaconess CEO Paul Levy posts an exchange of e-mails among surgeons over a new requirement that they complete an online training module brought in after a surgeon operated on the wrong side of a patient last year. However, he omits the name of the surgeon who thinks he would never make a mistake like that and that the training is just a waste of his time.
Here's what happens when you let people who use scalpels and other sharp implements on a daily basis near pumpkins.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is replacing bottled water with tap water in pitchers for meetings:
Jim Hurst, chief of surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center details an extensive surgical procedure and recovery (and relapse and more recovery) in the unit he normally oversees.
... The next setback came on April 14. Pam McColl removed my sutures and uttered that word no one likes to hear, "Hmmm." I hate that word. ...
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today a fired Beth Israel Deaconess doctor will get her day in court, because the contract she signed didn't specifically mention sex discrimination as an issue to be decided outside the court system.
The ruling comes in a suit filed against Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center by Dr. Carol Warfield, who alleges Dr. Josef Fischer, chief of surgery, got her fired as anesthesiologist-in-chief out of sexism, and that hospital management did nothing to stop "a relentless pattern of gender-based discriminatory treatment" over several years before she was fired.
USA Today says Boston has the nation's longest wait times to get an appointment for a specialist. Beth Israel Deaconess CEO Paul Levy discusses the medical center's efforts to cut wait times for its clinics:
Over one year, the average wait time for all of our medicine clinics has dropped from 13 days to 4.4 days.
Such as veterinary services, medical center CEO Paul Levy writes.
Earlier:
Some patients showed up early.
Paul Levy reports that all the bar-code scanners in the world are still not a substitute for a trained nurse - who thought the bag of medicine she'd just checked out was "slightly heavier than usual" and sure enough, the dosage was higher than it should have been, due to what turned out to be a mistake at the drug wholesaler.
The state Department of Public Health says Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center failed to adequately deal with outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant staph in its maternity unit.
Medical Center CEO Paul Levy has posted a memo on the state citation and what the hospital is doing about it. He adds all the cases have been treated successfully and none involved babies or parents in the neo-natal intensive care unit.
Paul Levy reports medical department chiefs at the hospital have started a Physicians Support BIDMC Fund and that, to date, senior docs have agreed to forego more than $350,000 in salaries as the hospital tries to cut a projected budget deficit.
Paul Levy at Beth Israel Deaconess posts the e-mail he sent to hospital staff last night on the hospital's budget: The hospital will likely lay off 150 people, but that's compared to the 600 originally planned - and the 900 lowest-paid workers will not be laid off.
Other money saving steps: Executives will lose the 3% raises they got on Jan. 1, employees will temporarily stop accruing "earned" vacation time, the hospital will not fill most positions as they become vacant through attrition, an annual staff barbecue is cancelled and the hospital will no longer subsidize most employees with BlackBerries or pay for meals at staff meetings. Also, top hospital management, including Levy, are taking pay cuts.
Levy also explains why the hospital won't be canceling its contract with the Red Sox - partly because it has a contract and partly because the deal is an excellent marketing tool.
One interesting reason the hospital will bring in less money than originally budgeted: A new state law forbidding hospitals to send away emergency patients means Beth Israel is now seeing fewer ER patients, because BI was where many of these "diverted" patients ended up.
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