As we start a new week, here’s a quick wrapup of important healthcare stories that you might have missed in the week that was:

1. Retail health clinics — often staffed by non-physicians and set up in big-box retailers or drugstores — have been touted as one way to provide affordable care for the uninsured. While they’ve expanded rapidly over the past three years, the clinics have recently hit a rough patch, with some stores closing scores of outlets and others scaling back their growth plans, according to the WSJ. Investors apparently thought the clinics would break even in as little as six months, when instead it might take more like two years; they’re complex to manage to boot.
2. Preventable medical errors remain a huge problem for most hospital systems, but a few are making progress against the problem. Health Data Management reports that a Blue Cross and Blue Shield-sponsored project helped 14 New Jersey hospitals save $6.4 million over the past two years by using data-mining software to identify patterns of hospital-acquired infection and to put countermeasures into place. Similar programs are underway in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Texas and Alabama.
3. Hospital chains, like insurers, are under increasing financial pressure these days. Not HCA, which says it’s on the prowl for additional hospital acquisitions, according to Modern Healthcare. The for-profit hospital chain says it would like to snap up a large, urban non-profit system that leads in a fast-growing market.
4. Fears of a nursing shortage and a sagging economy have sparked new interest in nursing as a career — and have also led some shady operators to enter the nursing-school business, where students can find that their schools aren’t actually accredited after they’ve paid thousands of dollars in tuition, the WSJ reports.
5. Doctors have drawn up a gut-wrenching list of criteria that would dictate which people would get priority for medical treatment in case of a virulent pandemic. Among those at the bottom of the list: The very elderly, those with severe injuries or burns, and anyone with serious dementia.
6. Medtronic said it will cut up to 1,100 jobs from its 39,500-strong workforce. Although the medical-device maker was vague about its plans, calling them part of a “global restructuring,” it said the cuts would fall on businesses that have matured.
7. Identify thieves are starting to prey on medical records, USA Today reports, in the latest scare story about the “peril” of digitizing medical information. Although the story offers a few anecdotes from court cases — for instance, one man was convicted in Florida for stealing patient information and submitted $2.5 million in fake medical bills — broader statistics on the problem are, unsurprisingly, scarce. An earlier but more interesting USA Today story notes the difficulty many patients have getting access to their existing records, particularly after something has gone wrong medically.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Môsieur J, CC 2.0