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Robin Steinmann remembers a time when nurses were pretty much one-size-fits-all.
“It used to be that if you worked in one area of the hospital, you could float around and work anywhere,” said Steinmann, who handles human resources at Anderson Hospital in Maryville.
Those days are long gone.
“Now areas are becoming more specialized, more complicated,” Steinmann said, “and that can’t happen anymore.”
The emphasis on specific medicine is a small factor in a national health care trend that’s being felt in the Metro East more and more: an acute deficit of trained, professional nurses. While the issue has been simmering for years, it’s become more prominent recently, intensified by changes in the health care industry, an aging baby boomer population just starting to tax the system and a recession that’s altered how people take care of themselves.
Metro East health care administrators and educators know all about the concerns. They’re crafting plans to make sure the shortage won’t catch them off guard. But there are real challenges, including the harsh reality that there won’t be enough new nurses entering the workforce for years, maybe decades.
“We only have the capacity to admit so many students based on our resources and classrooms,” said Virginia Cruz, an associate professor in the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Nursing, the only of its kind in this part of the state. “The sky is not the limit for us.”
The perfect storm
In the most basic sense, the dearth of caregivers is simple supply and demand. The number of new nurses graduating from various programs doesn’t meet growing patient needs, both in terms of sheer numbers and severity of treatment. One study estimates the state will have a nursing deficiency of 21,000
LG Electronics, a top global manufacturer of mobile phones and flat-screen TVs, said second-quarter net profit plunged as sales declined and its mobile phone business remained in the red.
LG earned 108.4 billion won ($103.3 million) in the three months ended June 30, the company said Wednesday. That was down 87.3 percent from net profit of 856.4 billion won a year earlier.
The result snapped two straight quarters of net losses for the Seoul, South Korea-based company, which has been making a push into 3D TVs and smartphones. LG has been trying to turn around its mobile phone business amid tough competition in the fast growing global smartphone market.
LG Electronics Inc. ranks No. 2 globally in flat screen televisions behind South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co. LG trails global leader Nokia Corp. of Finland and Samsung to rank No. 3 in mobile phones.
Sales in the second quarter fell 0.2 percent to 14.4 trillion won.
LG’s mobile communications business, which includes phones, suffered its fifth straight quarterly operating loss in the second quarter. But in a sign of improvement the scale of red ink declined sharply on higher smartphone sales and cost-cutting.
The mobile business racked up an operating loss of 54 billion won, sharply lower than 101 billion won in the first quarter and 119 billion won in the second quarter last year. Sales fell 4.6 percent from last year to 3.25 trillion won.
LG said it sold 24.8 million mobile phones during the quarter, up slightly from 24.5 million in the previous three-month period. The company sold over 10 million Optimus smartphones in the first half of this year, according to company spokesman Ken Hong.
LG’s results were also hurt by a loss of 56 billion won from investments in affiliates including flat panel maker LG Display Co. and LG Innotek, which manufactures electronic components.
Results were brighter in TVs. LG’s home entertainment business saw sales decline 5.4 percent from the year before, but the unit recorded a profit of 90 billion won compared with a loss of 26 billion won the same quarter last year. Sales increased at the company’s home appliance and air conditioning businesses, though profitability weakened from the year before.
“We expect profitability of our television business to improve next quarter but overall sales and profits will likely decrease as we reduce shipments of lower-end phones to focus more on the high-end,” said LG’s chief financial officer David Jung, according to Hong, the spokesman.
Shares in LG Electronics gained 2.6 percent to close at 83,800 won.
Separately, rival Samsung Electronics said Wednesday that it has sold more than 5 million units globally of the Galaxy S II, the latest version of its flagship smartphone, since it went on sale in late April.
Netflix Inc. is bracing for customer backlash that could result in its slowest subscriber growth in more than three years amid changes to its online video and DVD rental service that will raise prices by as much as 60 percent.
The sobering forecast issued Monday overshadowed the second-quarter earnings that accompanied the company’s outlook.
Netflix’s shares plummeted almost 10 percent, largely because the company expects its results for the current quarter ending in September to miss the targets set by stock market analysts.
The shortfall stems from an anticipated slowdown in Netflix’s subscriber growth amid the most radical change in the company’s pricing since it began renting DVDs through the mail 12 years ago.
Instead of offering packages that combine DVD rentals and Internet-delivered video for a single price, Netflix informed subscribers two weeks ago that it would sell the two entertainment options as separate plans. The change means customers will have to pay substantially more if they want to get both DVDs and Internet video from Netflix. For instance, a bundled plan that had been priced at $10 per month will now cost $16 per month, beginning Sept. 1, for existing customers. The prices of other popular bundled plans will rise by 20 percent to 33 percent.
Netflix expects many customers to pick between the DVD or streaming plan to avoid getting hit with a higher bill if they subscribe to both plans. The company said it anticipates another group of subscribers is so infuriated with the rate changes that they will stop being customers entirely.
Management didn’t estimate how many subscribers will cancel, but a large customer exodus appears to be factored into the company’s forecast for the current quarter.
Netflix expects to add as few as 190,000 subscribers or as many as 1.29 million subscribers in the current quarter. Either figure will be a falloff from the 1.9 million subscribers added in the April-June period to propel Netflix’s total customers to nearly 25.6 million. In last year’s third quarter, Netflix added nearly 2 million subscribers.
If the growth falls on the lower end of the range, it would represent the lowest number of subscribers that Netflix has picked up during a three-month stretch since the second quarter of 2008 when it added 168,000 customers. Back then, Netflix only operated in the U.S. It now has 1 million Canadian customers who subscribe to the Internet streaming service. The company plans to expand into Latin America later this year savings account payday advance.
“We are feeling great about the decision, as tough as it is,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told analysts about the new pricing plan in a Monday conference call.
Some of the numbers that Netflix released helped explain why the company felt compelled to change its rental plans, even though it knew the new prices would alienate man of its most loyal customers.
The company is trying to pay for increasingly higher bills for the rights to stream Internet video while still trying to cover the costs of shipping DVDs to millions of U.S. households that still want to watch movies on discs because movie studios insist on keeping the most recent theatrical releases on that format.
Netflix spent nearly $613 million on streaming rights in the second quarter, a more than nine-fold increase from the same time last year. The company so far has signed long-term contracts committing it to pay $2.44 billion for streaming rights.
Meanwhile, more than 15 million of Netflix’s subscribers were still renting DVDs through the mail, although they aren’t asking for as many discs each month as they once did.
Even before the rate changes, most of Netflix’s new subscribers have been signing up for a streaming-only plan that the company rolled out last year. About 75 percent, or 1.3 million, of the customers picked up in the second quarter opted for the streaming only-plan.
The company expects 12 million subscribers, or less than half of its customers, to be paying for both the DVD and streaming options at the end of September.
Netflix earned $68.2 million, or $1.26 per share, in the most recent quarter. That marked a 57 percent increase from $43.5 million, or 80 cents per share, at the same time last year.
Revenue climbed 52 percent from the same time last year to $789 million.
The earnings per share were well above the average estimate among analysts surveyed by FactSet. The revenue fell about $2 million below analyst forecasts.
Investors though were more concerned about management’s third quarter forecast. That calls for Netflix’s earnings per share to range from 72 cents to $1.07 per share on revenue of $800 million to $829 million. Analysts had projected earnings of $1.11 per share on $845 million in revenue.
Netflix shares plunged $27.16 to $254.25 in Monday’s extended trading.
Rising costs have prompted an Alaska company to close six weekly newspapers that serve rural and largely Alaska Native communities, putting nearly 40 people out of work.
Calista Corp., an Anchorage-based Alaska Native corporation which has owned the Alaska Newspaper Inc. chain for 19 years, announced Friday the increasing costs of fuel, paper and print technology led to the board’s decision to shutter the chain and liquidate.
“As a responsibility to our 12,000 shareholders, we had to take a hard look at the subsidiary and make a tough decision,” Calista President and CEO Andrew Guy said in a statement.
The weeklies in the chain include the Arctic Sounder, the Bristol Bay Times, the Cordova Times, the Dutch Harbor Fisherman, the Seward Phoenix Log and the award-winning Tundra Drums, which the Alaska Press Association voted the state’s best weekly newspaper this year. The last issues will be sometime in August.
The papers covered an area spanning 1,500 miles with only one paper, that in Seward, on the state’s road system.
“It is a sad day not just for the journalists who are losing their jobs, but for the readers who are losing their watchdogs, their storytellers, their advocates who helped them to better understand their communities,” said Julia O’Malley, president of the Alaska Press Club.
The papers continued the tradition of Native publishing that began in 1961 with Howard Rock’s Tundra Times, according to its website.
Villages then didn’t have phones or television, and the Times served as a link to the outside world while also helping unite them around the issue of Alaska Native land claims, the website says.
Calista Corp. has owned the chain since 1992, and in recent years was able to absorb many writers who were laid off at the state’s larger newspapers.
Rod Boyce, the managing editor at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, once worked for the chain, and said the closure will be felt.
“Any time you lose newspapers, it’s tough, and in a state as geographically large as this one, the loss of those newspapers is tremendous,” he said.
And with diminished resources at larger papers, it’s difficult for them to fill the void for those communities, he said.
Calista’s CEO said the chain leaves behind an impressive legacy.
“We’re very appreciative of the superb staff and extraordinary talent that have worked so hard to report on rural Alaska. We genuinely hope the communities affected by this will find a new media voice to tell their stories,” Guy said.
Also closing are ANI’s quarterly magazine First Alaskans and Camai Printing, an Anchorage printing house.
In all, 35 full-time and 3 part-time jobs will be eliminated, said Thom Leonard, a Calista spokesman.
Calista Corp. said it would offer unemployment assistance counseling, severance packages and referral letters. Current employees will also have preferential status for openings within the corporation, if they are qualified for the job.
A big earnings miss from Caterpillar halted a stock rally that brought the Dow Jones industrial average close to its highest level of the year.
Caterpillar fell nearly 6 percent after the equipment maker earned less than analysts projected last quarter. The company, which is often seen as a bellwether for the global economy because it sells equipment all over the world, told analysts in its earnings call that it expects the U.S. economy to grow moderately.
The weaker results from Caterpillar and a continuing deadlock over raising the U.S. borrowing limit capped the stock market’s gains and left the U.S. out of a broad rally in overseas markets. Stocks gained worldwide after European leaders reached a deal aimed at containing the region’s debt crisis.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 20 points, or 0.2 percent, to 12,704. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index gained 2, or 0.1 percent, to 1,346.
A strong earnings report from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. helped push technology stocks higher. The Nasdaq composite rose 17 points, or 0.6 percent, to 2,851.
AMD jumped nearly 19 percent after the chip maker said it expects more earnings gains in the third quarter. Flash memory card maker SanDisk Corp. rose 10 percent after its earnings rose sharply. And Microsoft Corp. gained 0.3 percent after beating analyst’s income estimates.
Traders kept close watch on negotiations in Washington over a deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling ahead of an Aug no credit check payday loans. 2 deadline. The impasse has overshadowed an agreement in Europe Thursday to give Greece a second financial lifeline and broaden the powers of a regional bailout fund.
Republicans and Democrats continue to search for a deal to cut the government deficit that would combine cuts to social programs with revenue increases through an overhaul of the tax code.
Concerns that the debt ceiling won’t be raised before the August deadline are becoming more widespread, said Brian Gendreau, market strategist for Cetera Financial Group. “But the background is a growing economy and fairly strong earnings news.”
McDonald’s Corp. rose 3 percent, the most of any stock in the Dow average, after the company’s income and revenue came in higher than analysts were expecting thanks to strong sales in Europe. CEO Jim Skinner said the company’s low prices helped bring in more customers as the economic recovery stumbled. Oil services company Schlumberger Ltd. rose 4 percent after its profits increased on a pickup in drilling in North America.
The Dow has gained more than 200 points this week. It opened Friday 86 points below its high for the year of 12,810.54, which came on April 29.
Stocks are mixed in midday trading, a day after the Dow Jones industrial average had its biggest gain this year. Traders are weighing concern about the U.S. debt limit against strong earnings from Apple and a slew of new deals.
Apple Inc. rose 3 percent after the company’s income doubled last quarter, trumping analysts’ estimates. Sales of the company’s iPhones quadrupled in Asia.
American Airlines’ parent company, AMR Corp., rose 2.4 percent after announcing an order for 460 planes, split between Boeing and Airbus. The new planes are expected to save money on fuel. Rising fuel prices left the airline with a loss of 85 cents a share, larger than analysts expected. The airline also said it would spin off its American Eagle subsidiary.
The Dow is down 10 points, or 0.1 percent, to 12,576 in midday trading. United Technologies Corp.’s dropped more than 2 percent, tugging down the Dow Jones industrial average.
The S&P 500 index is down 1 point to 1,325. The Nasdaq is down 11 points, or 0.4 percent, to 2,815.
Stronger profits from Coca-Cola Co. and IBM Corp. along with apparent progress in raising the U.S. debt limit prompted a stock market rally Tuesday. The Dow gained 202 points, its best day this year.
Clorox rose more than 3 percent after billionaire investor Carl Icahn raised his bid for the company to $80 a share. The consumer products company rejected his previous offer.
E-Trade Financial Corp. jumped 15 percent, the most of any stock in the S&P 500 index. E-Trade’s largest shareholder urged the online discount brokerage to consider putting itself up for sale. In a letter to E-Trade disclosed in a regulatory filing, the money manager Citadel LLC called for changes to the company’s board, saying E-Trade’s “phenomenal franchise” had been “squandered.”
The stock of Zillow, a real estate website, nearly doubled in its first day of trading. Zillow’s initial public offering priced at $20 late Tuesday. In early afternoon trading, it was trading at $39.
Cleaning and pest-control services company Ecolab Inc. said it would buy the water treatment company Nalco Holding Co. for $5.4 billion. Nalco soared 24 percent while Ecolab dropped 8 percent.
Tuesday’s rally turned the three major indexes positive for the month. The Dow and Nasdaq are now up more than 1 percent in July. The S&P 500 is up 0.4 percent.
Intel Corp. and American Express Co. are scheduled to report earnings after the market closes.
Bank of America reported a loss of $9.1billion during the second quarter partly due to the $8.5 billion settlement with investors who claimed the bank had sold them poor-quality mortgage backed bonds. That settlement was announced in June.
The reported loss available to common shareholders was 90 cents per share.
Excluding charges related to investor settlements, Bank of America Corp. earned $3.7 billion, or 33 cents per share payday loan lenders. That compares with net income of $3.1 billion, or 27 cents a share in the same quarter last year.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast Bank of America would report a loss of 85 cents per share.
Bank of America shares were up 23 cents in pre-market trading to $9.95
An intensifying voicemail hacking and police bribery scandal cut closer than ever to Rupert Murdoch and Scotland Yard on Sunday with the arrest of the media magnate’s former British newspaper chief and the resignation of London’s police commissioner.
Though the former executive, Rebekah Brooks, and the police chief, Paul Stephenson, have denied wrongdoing, both developments are ominous not only for Murdoch’s News Corp., but for a British power structure that nurtured a cozy relationship with his papers for years.
Brooks, the ultimate social and political insider, dined at Christmas with Prime Minister David Cameron. His Conservative-led government is now facing increasing questions about its relationship with Murdoch’s media empire.
The arrest of the 43-year-old Brooks, often described as a surrogate daughter to the 80-year-old Murdoch, brought the British police investigations into the media baron’s inner circle for the first time. It raises the possibility that Murdoch’s old friend Les Hinton, who resigned Friday as publisher of The Wall Street Journal, or his 38-year-old son and heir apparent, James, could be next.
Until her resignation Friday, Brooks was the defiant chief executive of News International, Murdoch’s British newspaper arm, whose News of the World tabloid stands accused of hacking into the phones of celebrities, politicians, other journalists and even murder victims. In the tumultuous last two weeks, she had kept her job even as Murdoch shut down the 168-year-old News of the World and tossed 200 other journalists out of work.
On Sunday she showed up for a prearranged meeting with London police investigating the hacking and was arrested. She was being questioned on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications _ phone hacking _ and on suspicion of corruption, which relates to bribing police for information.
Brooks’ spokesman, David Wilson, said police contacted her Friday to arrange a meeting and she voluntarily went “to assist with their ongoing investigation.” He claimed that Brooks did not know she was going to be arrested.
Hours after Brooks’ arrest, Stephenson said he was resigning as commissioner of London’s force because of “speculation and accusations” about his links to Neil Wallis, a former News of the World executive editor who was arrested last week in the scandal. Wallis worked for the London police as a part-time PR consultant for a year until September 2010.
Stephenson said he did not make the decision to hire Wallis and had no knowledge of allegations that he was linked to phone hacking, but he wanted his police force to focus on preparing for the 2012 London Olympics instead of wondering about a possible leadership change.
“I had no knowledge of the extent of this disgraceful practice and the repugnant nature of the selection of victims that is now emerging,” Stephenson said. “I will not lose any sleep over my personal integrity.”
Brooks’ arrest was the latest blow for Murdoch, the once all-powerful figure courted by British politicians of all stripes. Now Murdoch is struggling to tame a scandal that has already destroyed News of the World, cost the jobs of Brooks and Hinton and sunk the media baron’s dream of taking full control of a lucrative satellite broadcaster, British Sky Broadcasting.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said Murdoch “needs to come absolutely clean about what he knew, about what his senior executives knew, and why this culture of industrial-scale corruption _ so it is alleged _ appeared to have grown up without anyone higher up in the food chain taking any real responsibility for it.”
Rupert and James Murdoch are to be grilled by U.K. lawmakers Tuesday over the scandal. Brooks also had agreed to be questioned before a parliamentary committee, but her arrest throws that appearance into doubt.
“Obviously this complicates matter greatly,” said Wilson, her spokesman. “Her legal team will have to have discussions with the committee to see whether it would still be appropriate for her to attend.”
Lawmaker Adrian Sanders said if Brooks did not appear, “that is not going to go down very well with my fellow committee members.”
When Brooks stepped down Friday, she said she was going to “concentrate on correcting the distortions and rebutting the allegations about my record.”
She was editor of News of the World between 2000 and 2003, when some of the phone hacking took place, but has always said she did not know it was going on, a claim greeted with skepticism by many who worked there.
At an appearance before U.K. lawmakers in 2003, Brooks admitted that News International had paid police for information. That admission of possible illegal activity went largely unchallenged at the time and lawmakers are keen to ask her about it again.
Police previously arrested nine other people, including several former News of the World reporters and editors, over allegations of hacking and bribery. Those include Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor who became Cameron’s communications chief before resigning in January. No one has yet been charged.
Even more senior figures could face arrest, including James Murdoch, chairman of BSkyB and chief executive of his father’s European and Asian operations. James Murdoch did not directly oversee the News of the World, but he approved payments to some of the paper’s most prominent hacking victims, including 700,000 pounds ($1.1 million) to Professional Footballers’ Association chief Gordon Taylor.
James Murdoch said last week that he “did not have a complete picture” when he approved the payouts.
Hinton, too, could face questioning over wrongdoing at the News of the World during his 12 years as executive chairman of News International. But Hinton is an American citizen living in the U.S., so British authorities would have to seek his extradition if he refused to come willingly.
Chandrashekhar Krishnan, executive director of Transparency International UK, said British prosecutors seeking to prove that bribes that were approved at a high level would have to uncover strong evidence such as memos or minutes of a meeting.
“That usually proves to be very, very difficult,” he said.
Rupert Murdoch is eager to stop the crisis from spreading to the United States, home of many of his most lucrative assets _ including the Fox TV network, 20th Century Fox film studio, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. The FBI has already opened an inquiry into whether 9/11 victims or their families were also hacking targets of News Corp. journalists.
On Sunday, Murdoch took out full-page ads in British newspapers promising that News Corp. would make amends for the phone hacking scandal, with the title “Putting right what’s gone wrong.” News Corp. vowed there would “be no place to hide” for wrongdoers.
That followed a full-page Murdoch ad Saturday declaring, “We are sorry.”
Murdoch’s critics say that is not enough. Labour Party leader Ed Miliband said Sunday that Murdoch has “too much power” in Britain and his share of media ownership should be reduced.
Murdoch still owns three national British newspapers _ The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times _ and a 39-percent share of BSkyB.
At Tuesday’s committee hearing, which will be televised, politicians will seek answers about the scale of criminality at the News of the World. The Murdochs will try to avoid incriminating themselves or doing more harm to their business without misleading Parliament, which is a crime.
Police, meanwhile, are under pressure to explain why their original hacking investigation several years ago failed to find enough evidence to prosecute anyone other than News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. Detectives reopened the investigation earlier this year and now say they have the names of 3,700 potential victims.
Records show that senior officers had numerous meals and meetings with News International executives in the past few years.
Stephenson, who became police chief in 2009, said he had “no knowledge of, or involvement in, the original investigation into phone hacking in 2006.” He said he was “unaware that there were any other documents in our possession of the nature that have now emerged.”
Germany’s Volkswagen AG, Europe’s largest automaker, says it set a new first-half group sales record, as strong growth in the Asia-Pacific region boosted deliveries.
The Wolfsburg-based company said Friday it sold 4.09 million vehicles in the first six months of 2011, up 14.1 percent over the same period last year.
Asia-Pacific saw a 19.5 percent increase to 1.26 million vehicles, primarily in China. North American sales were up 21.2 percent to 319,100, while South American sales were up 10.9 percent to 455,200.
Europe remained the single biggest market, posting growth of 9.3 percent to 1.9 million vehicles, bolstered by robust 28.9 percent growth in Eastern Europe sales to 253,700 vehicles.