Hospitals Utah

Luella Worthington cannot hold back the tears. Speaking from the Cottonwood Cove Trailer Court in Murray, a town just minutes away from here, her voice chokes with emotion as she speaks of her 39-year-old son, Richard. "He is very loving and sorry and remorseful," she says. "I think that something just went, mentally." No one knows exactly what caused Richard Worthington, a devout Mormon and 39-year-old father of eight, to snap two weeks ago. Close to midnight on Friday, Sept.

A newspaper story about a human calamity has a beginning, middle and end for readers, but there is no easy closure for those whose misfortunes provide fodder for such accounts. It has been more than three months since Richard Worthington, armed with a pair of guns and a bomb, burst into a Utah hospital maternity ward intending to kill the doctor who had performed a tubal ligation on his wife.

A man carrying dynamite and two guns shot and killed a nurse and took over a hospital maternity ward Saturday, police said. He gave up more than 17 hours later and freed nine hostages, including a baby born during the standoff. Police said Richard L. Worthington, a 39-year-old father of eight, said he went to Alta View Hospital to kill a doctor who had operated on his wife two years ago to prevent her from becoming pregnant again.

Luella Worthington cannot hold back the tears. Speaking from the Cottonwood Cove Trailer Court in Murray, a town just minutes away from here, her voice chokes with emotion as she speaks of her 39-year-old son, Richard. "He is very loving and sorry and remorseful," she says. "I think that something just went, mentally." No one knows exactly what caused Richard Worthington, a devout Mormon and 39-year-old father of eight, to snap two weeks ago. Close to midnight on Friday, Sept.

A newspaper story about a human calamity has a beginning, middle and end for readers, but there is no easy closure for those whose misfortunes provide fodder for such accounts. It has been more than three months since Richard Worthington, armed with a pair of guns and a bomb, burst into a Utah hospital maternity ward intending to kill the doctor who had performed a tubal ligation on his wife.

After years of shipping data-processing, accounting and other back-office work abroad, some healthcare companies are starting to shift clinical services and decision-making on medical care overseas, primarily to India and the Philippines. Some of the jobs being sent abroad include so-called pre-service nursing, in which nurses at insurance firms, for example, help assess patient needs and determine treatment methods. Outsourcing such tasks goes beyond earlier steps by healthcare firms to farm out reading of X-rays and other diagnostic tests to health professionals overseas.

Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. agreed to pay a $2.5-million civil penalty to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it didn't move quickly enough to sell hospitals in Utah and Florida, the agency said. The penalty is the product of a 1995 settlement that resolved FTC antitrust concerns over Columbia's $3.3-billion acquisition of Healthtrust Inc., the largest hospital combination ever. The FTC said the penalty is the second-largest ever for failure to divest on time.

Bond brokers from around the country still call Camarillo City Hall every day looking for Donald Tarnow, the investments officer accused of single-handedly losing all the city's money and then some in 1987. The calls continue nearly two years after the discovery that $25 million in the city's treasury had been wiped out, turned from assets into debts through Tarnow's high-risk and high-stakes trading in the bond market with public funds.

Her first baby wasn't due for four days, but Misa Hayashi was advised by her obstetrician during a routine exam to check into the hospital that day. "The doctor said the baby was too big for me to push out and we should go ahead and induce labor," says the Alhambra woman, 24. "I didn't really question it. Induction sounds so common. We went home and packed a bag and checked in at the hospital." Once there, however, Hayashi's plans for an uncomplicated birth faltered.

A man carrying dynamite and two guns shot and killed a nurse and took over a hospital maternity ward Saturday, police said. He gave up more than 17 hours later and freed nine hostages, including a baby born during the standoff. Police said Richard L. Worthington, a 39-year-old father of eight, said he went to Alta View Hospital to kill a doctor who had operated on his wife two years ago to prevent her from becoming pregnant again.