Health Care Providers

Maryland has received a $375,000 federal grant to help launch a program to curb domestic violence, state officials announced Wednesday. The state is one of six that received grant money, which it will use on  a program to help health care providers play a larger role in helping those who may have been victims of domestic violence. Under the program to launch later this month, health care providers will have access to training to help identify and assist domestic violence victims.

WASHINGTON -- The White House is clashing with governors of both parties over a plan to cut Medicaid payments to hospitals and nursing homes that care for millions of low-income people. The White House says the changes are needed to ensure the "fiscal integrity" of Medicaid and to curb "excessive payments" to health care providers. But the plan faces growing opposition. The National Governors Association said it "would impose a huge financial burden on states," already struggling with explosive growth in health costs.

Contractual health-care workers who treat prison inmates may be required to undergo testing for the AIDS virus if the procedures they perform create a "significant risk" for transmitting the virus.The testing may be required if the health-care providers "regularlyengage in medical procedures that could expose patients to their blood and if the medical evidence shows that patients are subject to a 'significant risk,' " Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. wrote in an opinion to Gov. William Donald Schaefer that was made public today.

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration improperly forgave hundreds of millions of dollars of debts owed to the government by health care providers for Medicare overpayments and allowed them to continue billing Medicare for some of the questionable expenses, federal investigators have found. The investigators, from the General Accounting Office, said Medicare officials had ignored their own rules and procedures in negotiating secret deals to settle the debts -- the three largest Medicare overpayment cases of the past decade.

Maryland is slated to receive $1.8 million for its part in a national settlement with Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories over allegations of illegal drug marketing, Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said Monday. Abbott will pay $100 million to 44 states and Washington, where officials had claimed the company marketed Depakote for uses other than those approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It's considered safe and effective for treating seizure disorders, mania associated with bipolar disorder and migraines.

Imagine you are a nurse working in an emergency room, and a worker on a gas fracking well comes in covered in chemicals used in the drilling process. You call the gas company to find out what chemicals are being used to help in your assessment of possible health risks to your patient, and even yourself, but find out they don't have to disclose this information. Or, imagine you are a public health nurse in a community with many natural gas fracking wells, and you notice complaints of well-water contamination.

WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration will soon issue sweeping new rules to protect the privacy of medical records. But under pressure from the health care industry, officials say, they are backing off a proposal to give patients a broad new right to sue and recover damages for the improper disclosure of confidential information. Chris Jennings, the health policy coordinator at the White House, said President Clinton would issue the final rules, with the force of law, in the next few weeks.

St. Agnes Hospital was one of 11 medical institutions recognized by the Emergency Medical Technology program in the School of Health Professions at the Community College of Baltimore County. In addition to the Baltimore hospital at Wilkens and Caton avenues, the other institutions that received plaques from the school were Franklin Square Hospital, Harford Memorial Hospital, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Maryland Poison Center - University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, Mercy Medical Center, R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, Sinai Hospital, St. Joseph Medical Center, University of Maryland Medical Center and Upper Chesapeake Medical Center "These sites provide valuable experiences to our students that could not be duplicated in the classroom," said Deanna Wiseman, CCBC EMT program clinical coordinator, in a release.

WASHINGTON --The Bush administration has no clear strategy to protect the privacy of patients as it promotes the use of electronic medical records throughout the nation's health care system, federal investigators say in a new report. In the report, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said the administration had a jumble of studies and vague policy statements but no overall strategy to ensure that privacy protections would be built into computer networks linking insurers, doctors, hospitals and other health care providers.

If you had asked Gary Countryman a year ago about the status of workers' compensation programs in the United States, he would have described a system plagued by rising costs, bickering factions and an uncertain future.Now the president of the Boston-based Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. says progress has been made and there are reasons to be hopeful. However, he said there are still problems with the nation's network of state-run workers' compensation programs.He and other participants in a two-day conference that concludes today in Baltimore pointed to an improved dialogue between representatives of labor, employers, insurers and health care providers.