Contra Costa County will direct $6 million to keep cash-strapped Doctors Medical Center afloat for the next few months and give officials time to ponder what to do next. The $6 million property tax transfer approved by the board of supervisors Tuesday represents a third of the San Pablo-based hospital's annual $18 million deficit. The money will allow it to continue to operate while officials scramble to come up with a permanent rescue formula for a downsized facility.

Every year Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center releases a glossy brochure called Report to the Community. Among the doctor profiles and research-breakthrough stories are several dry metrics dealing with the number of beds, total patient and outpatient days and, perhaps most impressively, the year’s dollar value for something called “community benefit contributions.” Cedars, which is the state’s third highest-earning nonprofit hospital, claimed $640.3 million as its 2012 community benefit contribution.

An activist nurses union is pushing for legislation in Massachusetts that would create greater transparency regarding hospital prices, executive compensation and investment of assets. The Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), affiliated with the National Nurses United, supports legislation, HB 3844, that would require disclosure of hospital profit margins, executive pay, and how organizations invest assets overseas. The union is also pushing for a voter ballot initiative as a backup to the legislative route.

A radio advertisement was launched on Wednesday blasting hospital CEOs in Massachusetts for their excessive salaries and compensation packages, while also pointing out the millions of dollars stashed in accounts in the Cayman Islands. The advertisement was released while hospital CEOs gather together at the Chatham Bars Inn for the Massachusetts Hospital Association annual meeting in an effort to show the disconnect between hospital CEOs and their desire to provide adequate patient care.

While hospital executives from across Massachusetts meet in Chatham this week, a nurses union is running a radio ad that criticizes Massachusetts hospital chiefs' compensation packages and calls for greater transparency of hospital finances. The ad campaign started Tuesday and will run through Friday, David Schildmeier, spokesman for the Massachusetts Nurses Association/National Nurses United, said.

The Massachusetts Nurses Association is ramping up its efforts to build support for two ballot questions that would change the way hospitals operate. In one example, the MNA polled 100 doctors who regularly care for patients in Massachusetts hospitals. Of the responses, 58 percent said they have seen executives cut valuable patient care services in order to increase a hospital's operating margin, and 70 percent said they believed greater transparency of hospital finances would help protect those programs.