Advocates of physician-owned hospitals praised Congress last week for passing a children's health insurance bill without language that would have restricted physician ownership, which had been added to it during the drafting process.

The bill, signed by President Obama on Feb. 4, reauthorizes and expands the State Children's Health Insurance Program to cover 11 million children.

An earlier version of the bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives included provisions that would have increased restrictions on existing physician-owned hospitals and hindered the development of new ones. A Senate version of the bill, however, did not contain those provisions, nor did the final, reconciled version that passed both houses with widespread support.

Molly Sandvig, executive director of Physicians Hospitals of America, praised Congress for leaving the physician ownership issue out of the legislation. "Congress recognized that the SCHIP bill was too important to delay its passage in order to address the contentious issue of physician ownership of hospitals, which was inappropriately attached to this important package," says Ms. Sandvig in a press release following the vote.

Irene Tsikitas

An anesthesiologist is being held without bail in the Hillsborough County, Fla., jail after allegedly smashing windows with a pipe at two medical centers and the offices of his former employer.

Surveillance cameras at Morton Plant Hospital, the Florida Medical Clinic and Anesthesia Associates of Pinellas County, all in Clearwater, captured images of Benjamin Sanchez, MD, of Tampa breaking the windows on Jan. 29, the day after he visited Morton Plant Hospital in violation of injunctions against him and made threatening remarks, according to a published report.

He was arrested on Jan. 30 at his home, according to a news report, and charged with two counts of criminal mischief and one count each of aggravated stalking and resisting arrest without violence.

This was reportedly the second arrest in three months for Dr. Sanchez, who was detained in November for the alleged aggravated stalking of a former colleague at Anesthesia Associates, from which he was fired in 2005, according to reports.

Kent Steinriede

The storyline of a recent episode of NBC's hospital drama "ER" featured video laryngoscopy front and center. The Feb. 5 episode, entitled "A Long Strange Trip," involved an aging, retired emergency department physician who recalls flashbacks to the 1968 emergency room in which he once worked. In the flashback scenes, direct laryngoscopy was employed to intubate a patient. But in the present-day scenes, video technology assisted the physicians in maintaining an airway. The device used in 2009 was Verathon's GlideScope Cobalt Video Laryngscope, invented by Jack Pacey, MD.

Dan O'Connor