Reporter John Frank was at the meeting of the House Select Committee on State Assets, which was discussing whether UNC Health Care should own Rex Hospital, among other things. By John's account, it was not a very comfortable meeting for the UNC Health Care brass. Read his Dome post.
Recently, reporter Jane Stancill wrote a story talking about how the UNC system had lost a lot of its allies in the legislature. Her story and John's reporting today are connected.
UNC Health Care will continue paying taxes on Eastowne Office Park property it bought this month from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, a spokeswoman said today.
As N&O staff writer David Bracken reported last week UNC paid $14.2 million for the seven buildings that Blue Cross vacated last year as part of a cost-cutting effort. The deal includes 47 acres and 152,000 square feet of space across U.S. 15-501 from the insurer’s 40-acre campus headquarters.
The property has an appraised tax value of $16 million, according to Orange County land records. The sale price was negotiated after both sides did their own appraisals, Blue Cross spokesman Lew Borman said..
Blue Cross paid $253,000 in property taxes on the buildings to the town, county and Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district in 2010. When two vacant land parcels in the deal are included, taxes totaled $334,000, Borman said.
UNC Health Care has paid $14.2 million for a portfolio of seven Chapel Hill office buildings that Blue Cross Blue Shield of N.C. vacated last year as part of a cost-cutting effort.
The deal includes 47 acres and 152,000 square feet of space in the Eastowne Office Park. The property is across U.S. 15-501 from Blue Cross’ 40-acre campus headquarters.
UNC expects to develop a master plan this year to determine how best to use the property, but spokeswoman Jennifer James said it would likely end up being home to a mix of administrative and patient-care facilities.
UNC Health employs about 8,000 people on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus, where there is limited parking available for employees. James said for much of the fall the system’s on-campus inventory of hospital beds were near capacity.
At least one major Triangle employer will allow workers to switch their health coverage if Aetna's contract with the UNC Health Care System is terminated next week.
GlaxoSmithKline, which employs about 5,000 people in this region, has told workers who are signed up for Aetna coverage that they can transfer to a similar health plan offered by UnitedHealthcare. Employees chose between Aetna and United for their coverage last fall, said GSK spokeswoman Mary Anne Rhyne.
"Health insurance is an important benefit for our employees," she said. "The company doesn't want them to have any disruption."
The move by GSK could increase pressure on Aetna to settle its contract dispute with UNC Health. The insurer doesn't want to lose members, and has been working to coordinate care with other local physicians and hospitals.
And now, from the No Fun At All Department....how to have a healthy tailgate.
An eating disorders expert from UNC-Chapel Hill says tailgating can be pretty unhealthy, whaty with all the high-fat, high-calorie foods washed down by all those high-calorie adult beverages.
So how do you eat better?
As a UNC system search committee zeroed in on Tom Ross as its top choice to run the state's public universities, one influential member was faced with a conflict.
J. Bradley Wilson is the president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina. He was also a member of the UNC search committee by virtue of his emeritus membership on the UNC system's Board of Governors, which he chaired several years ago.
Ross is also on the Blue Cross board, named to it earlier this year. As such, he would play a role in making employment and compensation decisions that could affect Wilson.
(photo courtesy cednc.org)
So when Ross's name popped up during the search committee's deliberations, Wilson said he stepped out of the room. He declined to participate in Ross's interviews to avoid a conflict of interest.
Now, Ross must offer to resign from the Blue Cross board. The organization's bylaws require that members offer to step down if they change jobs; however, the board doesn't necessarily have to accept that resignation, so Ross may indeed remain on that board, Wilson said last week. The matter has yet to be addressed.
The insurance board is heavy with members familiar with the university system. A second member of the UNC presidential search committee, Walter Davenport, sits on the Blue Cross board as well, but did not sit out the Ross interviews, according to a UNC system spokeswoman. He is not a Blue Cross employee, as Wilson is, and thus didn't have the same conflict.
Harold Martin, the current chancellor at N.C. A&T University, is also on the Blue Cross board. Prior to taking the reins at N.C. A&T, he served as a UNC system vice president.
Other board members include Jeffrey Houpt, the former head of the UNC Health Care system, and Lloyd Hackley, a former chancellor at Fayetteville State University.
Blue Cross hasn't disclosed what it's paying Ross for board work. Other board members were paid $33,047 to $51,314 last year, Blue Cross reported in a filing with the N.C. Department of Insurance.
Ross was hired last week to head the 220,000-student system. He starts work Jan. 1 and will earn $525,000 annually.
In a scathing letter published today in UNC Chapel Hill's Daily Tar Heel student newspaper, an emeritus faculty member bludgeons the university for last week's football game, which necessitated an early end to the workday for thousands of employees.
Charles Murphy wrote that the move illustrates that the university is ruled not by academics but by athletics, and writes that the operating rooms at the hospitals were shut down to accommodate game traffic.
He wrote in part: "Even UNC Hospitals operating rooms closed at 3 p.m. last Thursday. God help those who have the audacity to become acutely ill or injured during the Sacred Hours."
Well, that's not precisely accurate.
This according to Karen McCall, a spokeswoman for UNC Health Care:
The hospitals and ambulatory care center have 35 operating rooms.
That's 31 at the main hospital and the women's and children's facilities, and four more at the ambulatory care center.
At the hospitals, two are always held open for emergencies.
Hospital officials did not shut the rest down at 3 p.m. last Thursday, the time at which university employees were ordered home to clear the way for football fans, McCall said.
Rather, the hospitals went to a reduced operating room schedule in much the same way it would on holidays or at other times when there are fewer scheduled surgeries.
Thus, there were 18 operating rooms in use at 3 p.m. that day, then scaled back to 9 at 7:30 p.m., McCall said. The operating rooms at the ambulatory care center were shut down at 3 p.m., as were the clinics there, she said.
The next morning, everything resumed at a normal schedule.
"We reduced the number of operating rooms running in response to the fact that people would have a hard time getting in and out," McCall said. "We never closed. The emergency room is always open."
A hacker who wormed into a UNC Chapel Hill computer server may not have gotten access to as much information as officials originally feared.
UNC School of Medicine officials said last week that a security breach had left data related to as many as 236,000 women enrolled in a mammography study exposed, including 163,000 social security numbers.
But now school officials say the number of exposed files is actually about 160,000 total, including about 114,000 social security numbers, said Stephanie Crayton, a UNC Health Care spokeswoman.
"As we're getting knee-deep into the investigation, we're finding the numbers coming down," she said.
The intrusion was detected in July but may have occurred as far back as 2007. A hacker got into the Carolina Mammography Registry, a 14-year-old UNC medical school research project that stores and analyzes mammogram information submitted by radiologists across the state.
The medical school set up a special phone line for people to call with questions. By mid-week, that line had received several dozen calls from women enrolled in the study, officials said.
The number is 877-434-3065 and is staffed from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
From a UNC Health Care blog, an insider's thoughts on a magazine's Best Hospitals rankings.
They're a gimmick, yes. But do they serve a useful purpose?
Read on here.
A daylong conference, "Taking Control of Your Diabetes," will be held Saturday, May 2, at the Raleigh Convention Center downtown.
The conference, featuring speakers, physical activity workshops and health exhibits, is open to the public and costs $25.
Among those presenting are Dr. John Buse, who leads the diabetes clinic at UNC Health Care. Buse is also past president of the American Diabetes Association.
The conference is sponsored by the Taking Care of Your Diabetes organization. For more information and to register, go to: http://www.tcoyd.org/conferences/conf_05.02.09.php
