Should a Healthcare System Facilitate Racially Concordant Care for Black Patients?

Addressing racial disparities in health outcomes is an urgent priority for many health care organizations, leading health care managers to explore the potential for organization-level interventions to yield substantive health gains. In recent literature, it is suggested that Black patients who are treated by Black physicians may achieve superior health outcomes in some settings. In this case discussion, we consider a case in which a medical director considers implementing a voluntary program to promote racially concordant care for Black patients. Commentators consider the precedent for such a program, both in current informal care networks and 20th century medical history, as well as the burden such a program may place on Black physicians and the risks of reducing patients' intersectional identities to be solely about race. A subset of commentators suggest that these risks are mitigated by the voluntary nature of the program, whereas others offer caution about relying solely on Black physicians to remedy health disparities. Others view multiple paths as morally defensible but emphasize the need for managers to take proactive steps to communicate and evaluate their choices in the face of such a complex social challenge.

Rethinking Private-Public Partnership in the Health Care Sector: The Case of Municipal Hospital affiliation.

By the late 1950s, New York City's public hospital system-more extensive than any in the nation-was falling apart, with dilapidated buildings and personnel shortages. In response, Mayor Robert Wagner authorized an affiliation plan whereby the city paid private academic medical centers to oversee training programs, administrative tasks, and resource procurement. Affiliation sparked vigorous protest from critics, who saw it as both an incursion on the autonomy of community-oriented public hospitals and the steamrolling of private interests over public ones. In the wake of the New York City fiscal crisis of 1975, however, the viability of a purely public hospital system withered, given the new economic climate facing the city. In its place was a new institutional form: affiliation and the public-private provision of public health care.

[The History of the F. Ch. Graal Perm Municipal Clinical Hospital, One of the Oldest Hospitals of the Ural Region].

The article presents the history of becoming and development of F. Ch. Graal Perm municipal clinical hospital, founded on October 17, 1915. In 1928 A. V. Lunacharsky characterized this hospital as "The pearl of Ural". V. N. Derevenko, the surgeon-in-ordinary of the Royal Family, is its first director. Famous national scientists, such as academician E. A. Wagner, professors D. P. Kuznetsky, V. N. Parin, B. V. Parin, I. A. Ivanov, V. F. Simonovich, J. S. Zimmerman and others worked in this hospital. They made a significant input into development of medical science and health care of the Ural Region.

[In process] / Alimentation et soins des maladies de I'Hotel-Dieu de Paris à l'èpoque moderne.

At the end of the Middle Ages, in 1492, the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris was still and establishment of charity intended to receive thepoor which came there to find a shelter and some food. Three centuries later, just before the French Revolution, it became an establishment of care mainly destined to receive the patients, to feed them, take care of them and if possible cure them. This medicalization of the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris is related to the progressive emergence of the medical function, which resulted in the creation and the development of a doctor's and surgeon's profession, but also in the development of the apothecary and its drugs. In this context, the diet plays a central part, because it happens to supplies. It would not be until the eve of the French Revolution that it would be integrated in the doctor's prescription and became a dietetic item.

[Surviving handwritten signatures of Ignác Semmelweis]. / SEMMELWEIS IGNÁC AUTOGRÁF HAGYATÉKA.

We know only rather few samples of Semmelweis's handwriting and therefore it is important to carefully preserve those we have. The first collection of his manuscripts was published by Antall et al in 1968. During the following 47 years only rather few further samples of his handwriting have been published. Our present collection completes the former list with two previously unknown letters and with an earlier unpublished document signed by Semmelweis. The first document is a certificate written by Semmelweis in 1854 regarding the age of a woman who delivered her child at Szent Rókus Hospital in Pest. The second document includes a request from the Court of Justice towards the Medical Faculty's of the University of Pest regarding the body's opinion in a case of infanticide. The third document is a registration book of a student at the University of Medicine signed by Semmelweis in 1859. Present work attempts to list all of Semmelweis's handwritings known at this moment. The list includes 29 documents written by Semmelweis and further 16 documents signed by him.