News Briefs: Week of May 31-June 4

This roundup includes the following news briefs:

Maryland has enacted a law that requires health insurers providing hospital, medical or surgical benefits on an expense-incurred basis in the state to pay bonuses to primary care physicians and other primary care providers for services provided in the office after 6 p.m., before 8 a.m., and on weekends and national holidays. The new law does not pertain to group model HMOs, which are specifically excluded from the bill's provisions.

Arizona has restored funding for its Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, thus reversing a decision made in March to cut $385 million from the program because of a $3.1 billion state budget deficit. Gov. Jan Brewer signed legislation last month reinstating the $385 million in funding.

CHIP is a joint federal and state program that provides health care coverage to children in low-income families nationwide, with eligibility varying by state. The new federal health care reform law, enacted only days after the Arizona CHIP cuts were approved, requires states to continue funding health care programs at current levels or forfeit all future federal funding.

Family physicians in academic medicine may have to wait longer to be promoted -- or they may not be promoted at all.

The Association of American Medical Colleges says in a new Analysis in Brief (2-page PDF; About PDFs) that promotion rates for first-time assistant and associate professors in medical schools have declined. In addition, the average time to promotion has lengthened.

Men had higher promotion rates than did women, and white faculty had higher promotion rates than did non-white faculty.