A hospital that is partially owned by billionaire entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is being leased by California to reopen and treat COVID-19 patients. The Los Angeles Surge Hospital, formerly St. Vincent Medical Center, opened its doors on Monday as a COVID-19 hospital. Soon-Shiong proposed buying the shuttered hospital out of bankruptcy for $135 million, and has separately proposed to use the property as a coronavirus hospital. That purchase hasn't closed, but he holds the majority...

A steep drop in routine lab test orders—the trickle-down effect of COVID-19 related doctor visit cancellations—is prompting Quest Diagnostics to furlough thousands of employees and cut pay and hours for others. Quest CEO Steve Rusckowski wrote in a letter to employees that even though the company has ramped up COVID-19 testing, it hasn't been nearly enough to offset the "significant reductions" to overall testing volumes, which shrunk more than 40% in the last two weeks of March. The...

HCA Healthcare has agreed to drop new fees it added for visits to Mission Health's cancer centers, primary care clinics, surgery centers and other specialty clinics and issue refunds to patients who paid them. The Nashville-based hospital chain made the change in response to an inquiry from North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein. In a letter to Stein last week, Nashville-based HCA acknowledged that a billing change it implemented across the Mission system on Aug. 1, 2019 created...

With providers eager to resume elective surgical procedures as COVID-19 cases begin to decline in some regions, a group of prominent trade associations released joint guidelines Friday that are intended to help them assess their readiness to do so. The guidelines from the American Hospital Association, American College of Surgeons, American Society of Anesthesiologists and Association of periOperative Registered Nurses say cases should only resume when the region has seen a reduced rate of...

UPMC on Monday defended its policy of continuing to perform elective procedures on a case-by-case basis amid the COVID-19 outbreak, even as nearly 300 doctors urged the health system to cancel such procedures across the board. In a letter to UPMC administrators signed by 291 of its resident physicians, fellows and attending physicians, the doctors argued that continuing to perform elective procedures and allow outpatient visits would lead to further spread of the novel coronavirus to...