Johns Hopkins Health

Annapolis Mayor Al Hopkins cut the ribbon to welcome the new Johns Hopkins Health Plan office to Annapolis, at a recent ceremony conducted at the South River Health Center, 200 Harry S. Truman Parkway.The event, attended by politicians and community leaders, heralded the opening of the facility, which will serve members of the Johns Hopkins Health Plan as well as fee-for-services patients. The office is one of 70 medical facilities serving members of the plan.More than 100,000 Marylanders use the plan, which has contracts with most major area employers, the state of Maryland, the federal government and Anne Arundel County government.

Bernice H. Cohen, a retired Johns Hopkins University scientist who was an early advocate of showing how genetics and epidemiology could be connected, died of congestive heart failure April 12 at the North Oaks Retirement Community. She was 86. "She was unique in having the foresight to bring together the scientific fields of genetics and epidemiology, and established the first formal academic training program in genetic epidemiology at Johns Hopkins in 1979," said a Hopkins colleague, Terri H. Beaty of Cockeysville.

The Johns Hopkins Health Plan, one of the state's largest health-maintenance organizations, is being sold to Prudential Health Care Plan Inc. for an undisclosed amount, the two companies announced yesterday.The proposed sale would pull the venerable Hopkins name out of the local HMO competition and catapult Prudential into a position as one of Maryland's largest HMOs as it absorbed nearly 115,000 Hopkins members.Officials at the two companies stressed yesterday that the sale would not result in any disruption of medical services to members or physicians and hospitals serving the HMO. The sale is expected to be completed in late spring, pending state regulatory approval.

Readers of "In Their Debt" (Dec. 21-23) may be dismayed - as we all are - by descriptions of individuals struggling to pay medical bills. But they ought to be far more focused on the fact that under Maryland's one-of-a-kind and widely praised rate-setting system, those who can pay for health services, but don't do so, unfairly burden everyone with higher rates and costs, including patients. Hospitals are strongly encouraged and given incentives by the Health Services Cost Review Commission to collect unpaid bills precisely so that everyone pays a fair share to shoulder the cost of care for those who truly cannot afford to pay. Under HSCRC rules, all unpaid patient bills are included in future rates that Maryland hospitals are given approval to charge to all patrons, including the insured and uninsured.

Layoffs are being considered at the financially strapped Homewood Hospital Center in Baltimore, which operates under the umbrella of the Johns Hopkins Health System, says the center's vice president for operations.But Edward Chambers, the vice president, denied reports yesterday that 35 to 40 percent of the center's workers would be dismissed in the near future."That's absolutely not true," he said."Layoffs, other expense reductions and a conversion to other kinds of services are among a number of options that are under study" after a recent consultant's report recommended arestructuring of Homewood and a reduction of its size, Chambers said.

Maryland's hospital regulatory agency has granted two Johns Hopkins Health System hospitals a 5 percent rate increase to cover $15.6 million in costs associated with closing financially troubled Homewood Hospital Center.In addition, the Health Services Cost Review Commission wants to increase the cost per admission of each of the 62 Maryland hospitals under its jurisdiction an average of $5 to pay off Homewood's $7.8 million bond debt, according to John Colmers, executive director of the commission, which sets rates for the majority of Maryland's hospitals.

Dr. Robert M. Heyssel, former president of Johns Hopkins Hospital and chief architect of the institution's emergence as a diversified health care delivery system, died yesterday of lung cancer at Nanticoke Memorial Hospital in Seaford, Del., where he lived. He was 72. From 1972 until his retirement in 1992, Dr. Heyssel served as hospital president and chief executive officer of Johns Hopkins Health System, where he earned a reputation as one of the nation's top health-service executives.

After a successful shakedown cruise, the Johns Hopkins Health System is seeking higher visibility for a plan in which it offers managed-care services directly to self-insured employers -- skipping over insurance companies and health maintenance organizations.The program, called Employee Health Plans (EHP), makes Hopkins the only hospital in Maryland contracting directly with employers, although other hospitals and doctors' groups have assembled care networks to contract with managed-care insurers.

Two giants of the medical care industry joined forces yesterday to expand their businesses and change the way health care is delivered in Maryland.The Johns Hopkins Health System, the university's School of Medicine, and U.S. Healthcare Inc. signed a broad agreement to collaborate on ways to deliver health care.In a key part, Hopkins said it would develop a network of providers -- doctors, hospitals and others -- to be used by U.S. Healthcare members in Maryland.At the same time, Hopkins and the Blue Bell, Pa.-based #i managed-care company would collaborate on quality control measures and information systems that could be applied around the country.

The Johns Hopkins Health System has agreed to sell its health maintenance organization to Prudential Insurance, the nation's largest commercial health insurer.Hopkins announced today it has signed a letter of intent with Prudential to sell the HMO for an undisclosed amount. Hopkins officials estimated it will take about three months to get the necessary regulatory approvals and then the HMO will change its name from the Johns Hopkins Health Plan to the Prudential Health Care Plan Inc., which trades as PruCare.

Baltimore's big medical rivals are going into business together. The Johns Hopkins Health System and the University of Maryland Medical System have agreed to co-own Mount Washington Pediatric Hospital, which UMMS has held through a subsidiary since 2000. It is the first time the two institutions will share ownership of a facility, and Johns Hopkins is paying $3 million for the opportunity. The two institutions have long sent patients to the pediatric hospital, which helps chronically ill children who need long-term care or rehabilitation.

Dr. Robert M. Heyssel, former president of Johns Hopkins Hospital and chief architect of the institution's emergence as a diversified health care delivery system, died yesterday of lung cancer at Nanticoke Memorial Hospital in Seaford, Del., where he lived. He was 72. From 1972 until his retirement in 1992, Dr. Heyssel served as hospital president and chief executive officer of Johns Hopkins Health System, where he earned a reputation as one of the nation's top health-service executives.

Columbia-based Celsion Corp. said yesterday that it had gotten government approval to begin testing on patients the safety and effectiveness of a 45-minute outpatient procedure designed to rapidly relieve symptoms of a benign prostate disease. Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore will be among the six sites at which Celsion will test its patented treatment system on 160 men. The company has successfully completed Phase I safety trials of the system, designed to relieve the constricted urethra that makes urinating difficult for men with enlarged prostates.

Anne Arundel County Executive John G. Gary announced yesterday that the county will gain 180 jobs because of the move in December of Johns Hopkins HealthCare administrative offices from Baltimore to Glen Burnie.The company is moving out of its offices at 111 Market Place in Baltimore to a larger space with more parking at the Bay Meadow Industrial Complex at 6704 Curtis Court, said Michael Thompson, president of the company.The move should not significantly affect downtown Baltimore nTC because most of the 20,000 employees of the Johns Hopkins University, hospital and School of Medicine will remain in the city, Thompson said.

All four of the possible suitors scrambling to claim the 233-bed Howard County General Hospital want it for the same reasons -- its educated, affluent and insured consumers. But each probably has a different vision of what sort of hospital the county will have after a merger.To two of the hospital's presumed suitors, the Johns Hopkins Health and Helix Health systems, getting Howard County General would be a further expansion in the region.If the University of Maryland Medical System took over, it would be, as one health-care expert puts it, a bit like the "mother ship" coming in for a landing: The university system has already co-established an oncology center and a rehabilitation center at the hospital.

Johns Hopkins Health System, the state's largest private employer, is vowing to protect its unskilled workers from being replaced by welfare-to-work trainees.Leaders of the Maryland Industrial Areas Foundation announced Hopkins' decision yesterday. The decision represents a victory for the association.IAF, a coalition of church-based community groups and unskilled laborers, made the announcement during its conference on welfare reform at the Johns Hopkins University. The event was attended by more than 1,000 advocates for the working poor.

After using its famous name to sell its health maintenance organization since 1984, the Johns Hopkins Health System will be swapping its hospital dome logo for the Rock of Gibraltar.Hopkins will sell its profitable HMO to Prudential Insurance Co., the nation's largest commercial health insurer, for an undisclosed amount. But Hopkins will continue to provide medical care to the HMO's members.Hopkins officials yesterday said it will take about three months to get regulatory approval for the sale.

A decade after taking over the former Baltimore City Hospitals with a promise to provide high-quality care, officials of what was until yesterday the Francis Scott Key Medical Center unveiled a state-of-the-art patient care tower in a step toward fulfillment of that pledge.The $60 million facility, one of the largest built in Maryland in recent years, will house 221 of 315 acute-care beds on the Southeast Baltimore campus of the Johns Hopkins Health System. At a dedication yesterday, the campus officially changed its name to the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.

As part of a strategy to dominate health care in the mid-Atlantic region, Johns Hopkins Medicine has affiliated with Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, creating a partnership that should make both more appealing to managed-care plans and patients in the Washington area.The agreement announced yesterday calls for Hopkins and Suburban to launch projects together in populous Montgomery County, including an outpatient center similar to Hopkins' Greenspring model in Baltimore County.In a twist, the two medical institutions also will collaborate with the National Institutes of Health's hospital, a first for the Bethesda research institution.