Health

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month. Do yourself and the people who love you a favor and take care of your breasts. For the record, that means doing more than buying them lacy bras. It means eating right, exercising and doing regular breast self-exams. And if you're over 40, don't be a boob ... get a mammogram.

The best private health care plans in the United States are run by nonprofit organizations, according to the latest survey published in the November issue of Consumer Reports.

Without shareholder concerns and other investor-related issues, nonprofit health care companies can better focus on their mission to provide care itself, said Dr. John Santa, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center. "Investors have an expectation of getting a return and resources have to be devoted to that, and that creates a different culture," Santa said.

Two of the Twin Cities' most prominent health care systems, HealthPartners and Park Nicollet, have signed an agreement to join operations, marking the biggest merger in the local health care market in two decades.

If approved by state and federal regulators, the merger would create the state's second-largest hospital system by revenue, behind the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, and combine two organizations with storied traditions in Twin Cities medical care.

Amber Fowler, executive director of the Northwest Burn Foundation, speaks with FundRaising Success about her organization and its fundraising.

A large health care grant unveiled Tuesday is aimed at tackling an often overlooked side effect of hospital care: the loss of dignity that afflicts particularly sick patients.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, created by the Intel Corp. founder and his wife, plans to award $500 million to hospitals over the next decade with the lofty aim of eliminating all preventable harms done to patients in acute-care settings.

Strong and regular scrutiny of the health care industry is not unexpected, however, a survey conducted by the Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA) found that nonprofit institutions undergo more government audits than their for-profit counterparts. The survey also found that while larger institutions undergo more audits than smaller ones, the staffing levels to meet the demands of the numerous government audits are considerable across institutions regardless of their size.

A California state Senate committee is discussing issues about nonporfit hospitals at a hearing as part of the debate over whether nonprofit hospitals do enough to justify their tax-exempt status. California law requires most tax-exempt hospitals to submit information annually on their "community benefits" through free or partial charity care and other means.

But state law doesn't require nonprofit hospitals to deliver specific amounts of uncompensated care and other community benefits in order to qualify for their tax-exempt status, according to state auditors.

No matter how the Supreme Court decides on the national health care law, nonprofit hospitals will face a rocky future, Moody's Investors Service said in a study published on Thursday.

"Regardless of the court's ruling and the result of the November elections, policymakers will be faced with addressing the steep federal budget deficit, which almost certainly will include altering federal funding for Medicare and Medicaid," says the study.

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, has announced grants and technical assistance totaling $4 million to organizations working to combat childhood obesity and health disparities in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.

The foundation awarded grants through its Growing Up Healthy initiative and contributed $1 million in technical assistance and consultation services over three years through its Culture InSight program.

As the United States and Canada emerged from the Great Recession, charitable pledges to nonprofit health care organizations slowed in fiscal year 2010, jeopardizing the ability of health care systems in both countries to generate philanthropic funding necessary to meet their long-term, construction, equipment and patient needs. These and other findings were contained in two reports published by the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP) based on its detailed Performance Benchmarking Service survey of fundraising activities in both countries.