Connecticut Health Investigative Team (https://c-hit.org/tag/new-haven/page/4/)
Twenty-three Connecticut hospitals will forfeit Medicare funds in the next year under a new federal policy that penalizes hospitals with significant numbers of patients who are readmitted within a month of discharge.
As the Malloy administration seeks to expand home health care options and reduce reliance on nursing homes, a new national report shows Connecticut ranking in the bottom-quarter of states on several key indicators of home health quality, including the percentage of home care patients who show improvement in mobility and who avoid hospitalizations.
As Myriad Genetic Laboratories nears its one millionth predictive genetic test for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, the cost of the test has more than doubled, and the company’s 15-year patent monopoly is being challenged by critics who contend it is stymieing other potentially life-saving screening.
Multi-million dollar initiatives to help at-risk and parenting teens across Connecticut call for “evidence-based” and “culturally appropriate” approaches – the mantra of experts assisting Hispanic youth, who have the highest number of teen births in the state.
From March through May of this year, more than 700 arrests were made in Connecticut schools, two-thirds of them for minor offenses such as breach of peace or disorderly conduct, according to data obtained from the Court Support Services Division (CSSD).
Patients treated for pneumonia at four Connecticut hospitals have ended up readmitted to the hospital within 30 days at rates significantly higher than the national average—a lapse that the federal government considers costly and potentially harmful, and that could lead to Medicare penalties beginning in 2012.
Two physicians, in Norwich and New Haven, have been reprimanded by the state Medical Examining Board for improper conduct connected to errors made during surgeries, while a third physician who had escaped Connecticut sanctions for out-of-state sexual misconduct also has been disciplined.
Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, Bridgeport made its summer marine police unit a year-round effort to protect the port, where oil, coal, bananas and pineapples arrived on ships from Colombia, Costa Rica and Indonesia.Police officer Ed Martocchio signed up for the harbor patrol, motivated by 9/11. Today, he remains on alert.“I spend every waking hour and some sleeping hours worrying about them,” Martocchio said of terrorists, dragging his hands down his tanned face while patrolling the harbor by boat one hot August day. “What are they going to do next? Where are they going to do it?”Martocchio, 43, boards tankers with the Coast Guard to check the passports of the international crews, giving him a front seat on the war on terror.“I went from being an ordinary city cop to someone who can potentially have an international impact,’’ he said.
While the number of veterans discharged for “personality disorder” has dropped dramatically in the last two years, the numbers of service members diagnosed with adjustment disorder has climbed, leading veterans’ groups to charge Wednesday that the military may be playing a shell game to deny benefits to combat veterans.