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People who suffer severe strokes here can avoid the worst if stricken within a 30-minute ambulance ride to Rhode Island Hospital, the region’s only comprehensive stroke-treatment facility. Just across the Taunton River in Massachusetts, patients even closer to Rhode Island Hospital aren’t so lucky. There, state emergency-medicine rules decree that stroke victims are taken to local hospitals offering more routine treatment. Typically, those patients have to wait an hour or more before being transferred to RIH in Providence, doctors say. (Burton, 11/28)

Providers, hospital associations and policy experts believe revamping the tool the CMS uses to set hospital payments could be a lifeline for rural hospitals. HHS' Office of Inspector General suggested changes to the wage index in a new report that found holes in the system that has resulted in millions of dollars of improper payments to hospitals across the country. The flawed calculations have created a series of winners and losers whose reimbursement levels are minimally tied to wages, labor costs and cost of living, as the index initially intended. (Kacik, 11/27)

Providers are still struggling to optimize revenue cycle-related electronic health record functions and manage the increase in self-pay consumers, according to a new survey. More than half of 107 hospital and health system executives surveyed said they struggle to keep up with EHR upgrades or underuse EHR functions, according to a Navigant analysis based on a survey by the Healthcare Financial Management Association. The share of executives who relayed that sentiment increased from 51% in 2017 to 56% in 2018. (Kacik, 11/28)

The complaints submitted to Attorney General Maura Healey’s office all described a similar scenario: Patients sought treatment in an ordinary physician office or urgent care center. But to their shock, they were billed for an expensive outpatient hospital visit instead. (Kowalczyk, 11/28)

Seven hospitals in the New Orleans-metropolitan area received an 'A' rating from a national watchdog group recognizing their efforts in providing high safety standards for their patients. The Leapfrog Group's Fall 2018 Hospital Safety Grade uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to more than 2,600 hospitals across the U.S. looking at their performance in preventing medical errors, infections and other harms among patients in their care. The survey is released twice a year by the Leapfrog Group, a national independent, nonprofit organization founded in the year 2000 to act as a watchdog collecting and reporting hospital performance data. (Clark, 11/28)

Florida hospitals are battling about cancer treatment and the appropriate level of state regulation of bone-marrow transplants. In one corner is Cleveland Clinic Florida Health Systems, which has tried unsuccessfully to get approval from the state to offer bone-marrow transplants and is throwing its support behind proposed changes to eliminate a key type of regulation. And in the other corner are six Florida hospitals that argue bone-marrow transplant programs are services so complex and expensive that they rise to the level of requiring the blessing of state regulators. (Sexton, 11/28)

The Heart Institute at All Children’s was dedicated to children with heart defects and had been working in recent years to grow in size and prestige, according to the hospital, which announced it would integrate into the Johns Hopkins Health System in 2010. But through extensive interviews with current and former employees and family members of those treated there and a decade’s worth of billing records, the newspaper probe, published online Wednesday, identified many instances of treatment gone horribly wrong. (Cohn, 11/28)

Pearland Medical Center, which became the first hospital in Pearland when it opened three years ago, has expanded to add 19 licensed beds in a second-floor medical-surgical area that includes an observation unit. ...The HCA Healthcare-affiliated hospital opened in 2015 and debuted the $8.5 million expansion on Nov. 29, according to a news release from the company. Completed after six months of construction, the addition adds 14,380 square feet to the hospital, bringing the total size to 158,380 square feet, and increases its total capacity to 53 licensed beds. (Jones, 11/28)

San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin wants Mark Zuckerberg's name removed from the city's public hospital.In an impassioned speech at the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, Peskin railed against the Facebook founder over allegations that the company mishandled user data. Keeping Zuckerberg's name on the building, he argued, sends the wrong message, regardless of how much money he has contributed. (Coral and Green, 11/28)

A hospital in Hawaii is battling a scabies outbreak after “a number of people” reported symptoms of the highly contagious skin condition, a spokeswoman said. A spokeswoman for Kona Community Hospital said Wednesday that the outbreak was confirmed Nov. 19, although she declined to say how many people had been infected, citing employee and patient privacy. Those who may have been exposed at the hospital, which is in Kealakekua, were contacted and treated for infection, and staff members were given instruction on scabies, according to a statement from the hospital. (Bever, 11/28)

The CMS is threatening to strip Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, of its ability to care for Medicare patients because a patient died after receiving a large dose of the wrong medication. Termination from Medicare would take place Dec. 9 if Vanderbilt doesn't implement specific efforts to ensure patients receive the right medication at the right doses. (Dickson, 11/28)