NEWS
By Frederick N. Rasmussen | July 1, 2009
Raymond P. Srsic, a longtime Anne Arundel County pediatrician and professor of medicine whose practice spanned 50 years, died Thursday of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 81 and lived in Queenstown. Dr. Srsic, the son of a saloonkeeper and a homemaker, was born and raised in Pittsburgh. He was allowed to skip his senior year at North Catholic High School and enrolled at the University of Notre Dame, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1948.
NEWS
By Sandra G. Bodman | June 8, 2009
Until recently, the sagging economy wasn't a subject Dr. Mary Newman routinely discussed during office visits. But after a steady stream of longtime patients confided that they had been laid off, were about to lose their health insurance or that their pay had been slashed, she added the recession to her standard checklist of questions. "It's hitting people I hadn't expected," said Newman, an internist who practices in Lutherville. "If a person is in financial hardship, we help them." Doctors are encountering more patients struggling to pay for care.
NEWS
April 10, 2009
Maryland hospitals are sharing the pain as people who have lost jobs and health insurance in the economic downturn find it harder to pay medical bills. Some institutions have had to cut services, lay off employees and reduce subsidies paid to doctors and nurses to keep them on staff. Bon Secours Hospital, a venerable West Baltimore institution since 1881, has been especially hard hit. Most of the hospital's clients are poor and rely on Medicare and Medicaid to pay for health care. Many patients with chronic illnesses - such as diabetes, kidney disease and asthma - lack health insurance that would allow them to see a primary care physician for regular check-ups and preventive treatment.
NEWS
By Kelly Brewington | April 9, 2009
Officials at Bon Secours Hospital are asking the state for $5 million to keep the struggling hospital afloat for a year while they devise a new strategy to offer health care to a troubled West Baltimore community. The company and the religious order that oversee Bon Secours have not ordered its closure. But executives say the hospital needs an infusion of cash and a new vision to avoid shutting its doors. "We are losing millions to an old system that cannot be sustained in the future," said Richard J. Statuto, CEO of the hospital's parent company, Marriottsville-based Bon Secours Health System Inc. The hospital lost $22 million last year - the largest loss in a decade, according to the state agency that sets the rates that hospitals can charge.
NEWS
February 16, 2009
A state proposal to set income standards for charity care that Maryland hospitals provide - and are reimbursed for by the state - is welcome and overdue. A report on how Maryland hospitals provide treatment for indigent and uninsured patients found that collection policies on unpaid patient bills vary widely and are unclear. And that needs to change. A series in this newspaper last year detailed the lengths some hospitals will go to collect bills despite the state reimbursements. That included placing liens on the homes of people with few assets but for the house they live in. The practice left many patients at the mercy of collection agencies.
NEWS
By James Drew and Fred Schulte | December 23, 2008
Delegate John A. Hurson wanted to make Maryland's system for setting hospital rates fairer to poor people. As chairman of the House health committee, he was in a powerful position to make those changes happen. But he couldn't get several proposals through his own panel. They were watered down or removed from bills after the rate-setting agency and the powerful trade group representing hospitals teamed up against them. Hurson's experience was a testament to how sacred rate regulation remains in Maryland, more than 30 years after it was created.
NEWS
By Tyeesha Dixon and Kelly Brewington | October 26, 2008
Diana Moore learned the news through the neighborhood grapevine. Her family's primary-care physician of seven years would no longer accept Moore, her husband and daughter as patients - unless the family paid a $4,500 annual fee. The physicians at Charter Internal Medicine in Columbia are overhauling the practice, ditching the insurance-dependent model and instead charging a flat yearly fee in exchange for the promise of 24-hour access to doctors, unhurried...
NEWS
October 18, 2008
Trauma system puts needs of patients first It is not an exaggeration to say that Maryland has the finest pre-hospital trauma system in the nation and perhaps the world. Is the system perfect? No. Can the system be improved? Yes. Are all of us who work in trauma care committed to making it even better? Absolutely. But in the wake of the recent helicopter tragedy, I fear that we will forget that the genius of Maryland's system is its singular focus on doing what is best for the patient, not what is best for an individual trauma center, medical school or the medevac fleet.
NEWS
By Frederick N. Rasmussen | August 30, 2008
Dr. John C. Norton Jr., a retired Baltimore obstetrician and gynecologist who during his 46-year career delivered an estimated 7,000 babies, died Monday of complications from a stroke at his Catonsville home. He was 91. Dr. Norton, whose father was a Baltimore obstetrician and gynecologist, was born in Baltimore and raised on Montrose Avenue in Catonsville. By the time he was 9 years old, Dr. Norton had settled on a medical career. "It was a lofty dream, considering he spent two years of his early age sick with rheumatic fever," wrote Suzanne M. Dieringer, a daughter who lives in Davidsonville, in a eulogy for her father.
NEWS
By Doug Donovan | July 12, 2008
Baltimore has doubled the number of people using the medication buprenorphine to shake off heroin addiction but has struggled to keep them in treatment. As the Baltimore Buprenorphine Initiative has accepted more hard-core drug addicts dealing with complications such as mental illness, more drop out. At the start of the initiative in October 2006, officials had picked mostly highly motivated participants. The retention rate dropped to 52 percent for the year that ended June 30 compared with 65 percent in fiscal year 2007.