By PHIL GALEWITZ http://www.palmbeachpost.com BOYNTON BEACH — Palm Beach County’s hospitals are balking at paying a collective $1.1 million a year to ensure that residents seeking help at an emergency room have 24-hour access to a neurosurgeon. Hospital officials say they should not have to bear most of the burden of providing the emergency coverage. […]

by Felice Baker Landing page Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions Inc. is signing an increasing number of physician groups on to the Allscripts Electronic Health Record and Practice Management solution, which—on top of the October merger of Allscripts and Mysis— led to a 29 percent surge in the company’s revenue to $128 million in the quarter ended Nov. […]

By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D. http://www.nytimes.com In response to my recent column on patients trusting doctors too much, several readers wrote in about the difficulty of finding or sifting through information on doctors and diseases. Many asked for suggestions, so a couple of weeks ago I contacted several nationally respected leaders in family medicine, pediatrics, […]

by Janice Francis-Smith The Journal Record

BY DAWSON BELL http://www.freep.com LANSING — The new Michigan Supreme Court will meet for the first time today to elect a chief justice, welcome the first justice to join the court in a decade and, perhaps, give some indication of what path the court will take. Court observers expect Justice Marilyn Kelly will become the […]

By Alex Costello http://www.zwire.com Faced with the unenviable task of closing the largest deficit in New York state history – $13.7 billion for 2009-10 – Gov. David Paterson has created a budget that makes cuts in nearly every category, while increasing some taxes. One of the many items facing dramatic reductions is the state’s Medicaid […]

By Jamie Satterfield http://www.knoxnews.com The legal cure for out-of-state patients suffering malpractice at the hands of interns and residents at Tennessee’s teaching hospitals rests now not with white-jacketed medical professionals but with black-robed judicial power brokers. The state Supreme Court was asked Wednesday to decide a legal principle that has far-reaching implications for the state’s […]

BY GARY S. MIRKIN http://www.newsday.com

By Ted Griggs http://acadiana.medicalnewsinc.com