The Ohio Hospital Association has hired as its new president the former chief executive of the Iowa Medical Society.Mike Abrams, 50, will begin his new role in February with the Ohio Hospital Association (OHA), the state’s trade group for hospitals.Abrams will succeed Jim Castle in the role. Castle has held the OHA’s top post for [...]

This post is sponsored by the Ohio Hospital Association.Ohio hospitals are projected to add more new jobs by 2016 than any other industry, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. The influx of almost 35,000 new jobs in Ohio is a necessity as the estimated 3.1 million aging Ohio Baby Boomers seek [...]

The Ohio Hospital Association (OHA) announces long-serving president and CEO James R. Castle will retire Dec. 31 after 23 years of service.The executive talent-management recruiter Korn/Ferry International will administer national search efforts for Castle’s replacement. A search committee, assembled by OHA’s Board of Trustees and chaired by Fairfield Medical Center president & CEO and OHA [...]

The long-serving president of the Ohio Hospital Association is planning to retire at the end of the year.James Castle has led the OHA since 1989. Executive recruitment firm Korn/Ferry International will help the OHA search for Castle’s successor, according to a statement from the hospital group.“Under Jim Castle’s leadership, the Ohio Hospital Association has led [...]

The Ohio Hospital Association (OHA) has misgivings about a proposed law that would require hospitals to provide information about breast reconstruction to mastectomy patients before they undergo their procedures.The OHA doesn’t necessarily oppose sharing that information with those patients, it just questions whether the appropriate time to do it is right before an operation, said [...]

The Ohio Hospital Association prefers the Senate’s state budget proposal to the plan offered earlier this year by the House of Representatives.That’s because the Senate plan removes one provision related to Medicaid from the House budget that OHA didn’t like, and preserves a key Medicaid-related measure that the hospital group endorses.First, the Senate plan removes [...]

Ohio hospitals are pleased the legislature has heard their concerns and taken anti-market non-contracting language out of the state budget bill. The provision would have forced hospitals into lopsided relationships with Medicaid managed care plans (MCPs) with no incentives for the plans to negotiate reasonable contracts with hospitals.“Hospitals appreciate that their conversations with the House, [...]

A recent spike in commodity prices has thieves targeting hospitals’ radiology films to cash in on the silver the films contain.Knox Community Hospital in Mount Vernon, Ohio became one of the latest victims when a criminal posed as a recycling company employee before pilfering four 55-gallon drums of X-ray film, the Columbus Dispatch reported. Hospital [...]

An Ohio bill that would require hospitals to staff a circulating nurse in every operating room hosting a surgical procedure has drawn opposing reactions from the state’s largest nursing and hospital groups.House Bill 149 would order hospitals to ensure that a circulating nurse is assigned to an operating room for the entire duration of a [...]

Faced with a budget shortfall estimated at more than $8 billion, there was no question that Ohio Gov. John Kasich would call for some serious cuts to health spending. The big questions merely revolved around exactly where the axe would fall — and how hard it would fall on the state’s hospitals.