Featuring hospital and health care headlines from the media and Web from September 19-25.

Iowa Headlines 

Iowa Poll: 47% oppose health care reform effort
While  Iowans tend to oppose the congressional reform effort in general, most say they like specific reform ideas, such as health care co-ops, a national insurance exchange, a requirement that employers offer policies, and a requirement that U.S. residents have coverage.  Even one of the most controversial proposals, to create government-run “public-option” insurance plans, draws support from a slight majority. Iowans oppose only one of the six specific options noted by the poll – the idea of cutting payments to doctors and hospitals.  (September 25, 2009, Tony Leys, Des Moines Register) 

Couple Gets Married in Hospital’s ICU
Last week Cathy Troll ended up at St. Luke’s Hospital after complications from her lung cancer treatment, she’s been in the Intensive Care Unit since she arrived.  With a week until the wedding, Leeann’s plans quickly changed.  (September 20, 2009, Justin Foss, KCRG-TV) 

Hospital plans nearly complete
An artist’s drawings of how the new Belmond Medical Center will look were presented to the Belmond City Council Monday night. Since the hospital is city-owned, the council was asked to give the final approval to an application for low-interest funding from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development.  (September 24, 2009, Belmond Independent) 

New CCMH building walls to go up late fall
Although not immediately apparent at the site of the replacement Crawford County Memorial Hospital on the west side of Denison, amongst the dirt work necessary for paving and utilities, the footings are already being laid for the new building.  (September 19, 2009, Emma Struve, Denison Bulletin Review) 

Recession squeezes seniors’ meals, bills
Seniors sit among the recession’s greatest casualties because of higher medical insurance costs, reduced retirement savings and a stagnant housing and employment market, according to an AARP report released Tuesday.  The report noted that applications for retirement benefits are 9 percent greater than expected for this fiscal year.  The cost of medical care rose by 3.3 percent between August 2008 and last month.  (September 23, 2009, Grant Schulte and Jason Pulliam, Des Moines Register) 

Hospitals weigh limiting visits to newborns
Grandmas and grandpas, brothers and sisters, family friends and well-wishers could all be banned from the maternity wards at Des Moines hospitals this fall because of concerns that they might bring the H1N1 flu virus in with them.  The area’s two main hospital chains are considering new limits on visitors if the flu outbreak worsens. Under the proposed rules, only immediate family members would be allowed in the birthing centers, and siblings younger than about 14 would not be allowed in.  (September 21, 2009, Tony Leys, Des Moines Register) 

U.S.  Headlines 

Is the Mayo Clinic a model or a mirage? Jury is still out
A battle is underway among health-care experts and lawmakers over whether Mayo’s success can be so easily replicated.  Before embracing a fundamentally new approach to health care, dissenting experts and lawmakers say, Congress should scrutinize the assumption that a Mayo-type model is the answer.  (September 20, 2009, Alec MacGillis and Rob Stein, Washington Post)                                     

The way we die now
For reasons both cynical and clinical, the American political debate on health care treats end-of-life care like a contagion – an unspeakable one at that.  (September 23, 2009, Timothy Egan, New York Times) 

Provena makes spirited defense of charity care, tax status to Illinois court
The Illinois Supreme Court heard 55 minutes of arguments over how much charity care a hospital should provide and whether it should go beyond providing free medical services. The case pits Provena Covenant Medical Center in Urbana against the state Department of Revenue.  At the heart of the state’s argument in keeping Provena from being exempt from property taxes is a level of free care it provided in 2002 when the state Department of Revenue said the hospital’s charity care was less than 1 percent of its revenue. (September 23, 2009, Bruce Japsen, Chicago Tribune) 

Doctor-owned hospitals a lucrative practice, though opinions split on benefits
The American Hospital Association wants to ban doctors from referring patients to hospitals they own, because “the effect on health delivery and costs in communities can be devastating.”  Yet Baylor Health Care System says doctor-owned hospitals, like its Baylor Medical Center at Frisco, can serve patients better because they focus on doing a few things extremely efficiently and well.  (September 21, 2009, Gary Jacobson, Dallas Morning News) 

Those who can’t pay for care costing millions for those who can
Because the uninsured can’t afford to buy individual insurance, they accept charity care, putting even more pressure on the premiums paid by those with insurance.  In just three years – from 2005 through 2008 – charity care spending in North Carolina grew from $338 million to $624 million.  (September 19, 2009, James Gallagher, Triangle Business Journal)