Yahoo News reports: "Google's Growth Prompts Privacy Concerns"

Privacy experts look at the continued growth of Google, its varios services and how this information is aggregated and worry about the increase chance of abuse of yours and my privacy. More on Google and Privacy.

LifePoint Hospitals, Inc. Signs Agreement to Purchase Four West Virginia and One Virginia Hospital

According to a press release issued late today LifePoint Hospitals, Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to purchase four West Virginia Hospitals and one Virginia Hospital for approximately $285M, plus working capital. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2005.

The press release states that the facilities included in the sale are:

200-bed Clinch Valley Medical Center, Richlands, Virginia
325-bed St. Joseph's Hospital, Parkersburg, West Virginia
155-bed Saint Francis Hospital, Charleston, W. Virginia
369-bed Raleigh General Hospital, Beckley, West Virginia
68-bed Putnam General Hospital, Hurricane, West Virginia

This will give LifePoint a large footprint in West Virginia when you add in that it currently owns 132 bed Logan Regional Medical Center in Logan, West Virginia and 19 bed Guyan Valley Hospital also located in Logan, West Virginia.

West Virginia Seminar on Privacy & Confidentiality

Ted Martin and I have been busy preparing the materials for a repeat of a seminar we developed and gave last year on Confidentiality and Privacy of Medical Information in West Virginia. Here is a post following last year's event. Last year's seminar was well attended by health information specialists, medical record directors, business managers, hospital administrators, nurses, physcians and attorneys throughout West Virginia.

We will again be speaking on the topic of Confidentiality and Privacy of Medical Information in West Virginia at the Lorman Education Services seminar scheduled for August 25, 2005, in Charleston, West Virginia. You can find a complete copy of the agenda and information about registering for the event here.

I am also planning on being involved in a new Lorman Education Services seminar being offered in West Virginia in December 2005. The topic will be on the "Management of Medical Records and the Impact of the EMR Revolution". We are currently working on the agenda for this seminar. Stay tuned!

Hospital Impact

Check out a new blog (at least to me) called Hospital Impact which uses the inviting moniker of "what will it take for our hospitals to be the best run organizations on the face of the planet?" The blog is based out of Chicago and focuses on hospital leadership ideas and issues. However, the blog also has categories covering hospital related "links" and "scoops." Check out this post for more details on each of these topic areas.

I've just scanned the blog which got up and running in March 2005. I like the quality and diversity of the posts and plan to add it to my Bloglines RSS reader. Also I really like the feature built in that allows you to choose different types of "skins" for the blog. I haven't seen this on a blog.

I look forward to seeing more posts from this blog run by Tony. I found his personal category of posts perceptive and worthy of note. I particularly liked his post on "taking time to reflect more". I completely agree that we all need to take more time to put the pieces in place in this sensory overloaded information world that we now live in today. Also I can relate to many of his posts on getting his blog up and running and how he felt through the process.

Thanks to Matthew Holt over at The Health Care Blog for pointing me to this new blog.