Month: September 2011

That's $15 million down and $430 million to go. State officials unveiled the website Monday to detail how they will achieve hundreds of millions of dollars in unspecified savings for state health programs for the poor but laid out few of their actual plans to do it. Gov. Scott Walker's administration has now been working on those plans privately for the better part of this year. (JOURNAL SENTINEL, 9/27)

The Oshkosh school district could save about $774,000 this year and another $1.3 million next year by leaving its union-affiliated health insurance for a new provider. A committee of about 30 district employees, union representatives and administrators has recommended the school board ditch its insurance through the Wisconsin Education Association Trust, a non-profit company started by the state teachers’ union, for a cheaper but equivalent benefits plan through the Wisconsin County’s Association Group Health Trust. (OSHKOSH NORTHWESTERN, 9/27)

Poor Packers fans. Just few weeks into their new season as Super Bowl champions, they are about to be confronted with a near sacrilegious billboard on their way to Lambeau Field.: the Grim Reaper in a cheesehead and a warning about the health dangers of cheese. Never mind that thousands of them likely will be chomping on one of the favorite foods of America's Dairyland in the Lambeau parking lot and that one of the largest cheese companies in the world is based in Green Bay. That's exactly what the nutrition and animal rights advocacy group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine had in mind when it agreed to pay $3,500 to buy billboard space in De Pere that is visible from Highway 41. (JOURNAL SENTINEL, 9/26)

You know you’re not at a big-city hospital when the head guy hops on a mower to cut down the weeds. That was Jim Pernau, chief executive officer of Edgerton Hospital, tidying up the place before hundreds of local residents poured in Sunday to get a look at the community’s new hospital. The $26 million, 18-bed facility has a geothermal heating and cooling system, two miles of hiking trails snaking through the nearby woods, a menu based on fresh produce grown in the hospital garden, patient rooms featuring foldout couches for overnight guests and windows that open to let in fresh air. (WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL, 9/26)

A Germantown firm and its parent company have agreed to pay $4.8 million to settle a health care fraud claim launched by two former employees under the federal whistleblowers law. Universal American Financial Corp., of Missouri, controlled Abri Health Plan Inc. of Germantown, according to federal court records recently unsealed last week. Abri did business as Today's Health in Greenfield. (JOURNAL SENTINEL, 9/26)

The measles alert in Milwaukee began when an unvaccinated 23-month-old refugee from Myanmar flew here from Malaysia, according to a report Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The child flew to Wisconsin on Aug. 24 and was reported to have laboratory-confirmed measles on Sept. 7. Since then measles have been confirmed in two more people in Milwaukee, both of whom appear to have acquired the disease through exposure to the refugee patient, said Paul Biedrzycki, the city's director of disease control and environmental health. (JOURNAL SENTINEL, 9/23)

Construction could start as soon as today on a 24,000-square-foot medical facility that Mercy Health System plans to complete on the city's northeast side by the end of the year. The city's plan commission approved a conditional-use permit Monday for the first phase of what could over many years become a development of four Mercy buildings that encompass a total of 475,000 square feet. (JANESVILLE GAZETTE, 9/22)

A potentially deadly bacterium was detected on alcohol prep pads produced by a New York medical manufacturer three months ago, but the product was not recalled until this week because federal regulators didn't require it, the company said Wednesday. A day after the recall was launched Tuesday, word of it was slowly dribbling out to hospitals and clinics responsible for pulling the potentially contaminated products. Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, for instance, was not aware of it until told by a Journal Sentinel reporter. (JOURNAL SENTINEL, 9/22)