Featuring hospital and health care headlines from the media and Web from October 10-16.

Iowa Headlines 

Officials call for end of prescriptions on paper

Iowa Health System officials called Monday for doctors statewide to get rid of prescriptions on paper and go entirely electronic.  Monday, the group announced their partnership with Allscripts to launch what’s being called “e-prescribe Iowa.”  (October 12, KCCI-Des Moines)

Donors help open new Jones County hospital

Stepping in from the cold October winds and snowflakes, hundreds of people took in the upgrade the Jones Regional Medical Center looks to offer.  (October 10, KCRG-Cedar Rapids)

Hospital project receiving multi-million dollar boost

The multi-million dollar piece of the puzzle for Guttenberg Municipal Hospital’s construction and renovation project has been obligated. The USDA Rural Development Program has announced $16.9 million in loan funds will be directed to assist the hospital’s project, which will upgrade infrastructure and enhance emergency room, surgical, occupational and cardiac rehab services.  (October 12, Dubuque Telegraph Herald)

Hospital receives loan for new facility

Van Buren County Hospital received some good news this week.  The hospital in Keosauqua  is the recipient of $200,000 federal loan through the Community Facilities Loan and Grant Program. U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley made the announcement.  The money will be used to help fund a $1.1 million facility on the hospital’s campus. (October 10, KTVO-Kirksville, Missouri)

Health care forum in Decorah

If America is going to reform its health care system, it’s going to have to change its priorities. “We’re going to have to start rewarding physicians for value, not volume,” Decorah’s Dr. Kevin Sand told about 20 people during a health care forum sponsored by the Upper Iowa League of Women Voters last week.  (October 14, Decorah Journal)

Central Iowa organizations prepare for H1N1

Though it wouldn’t come with rising waters or rip through downtown with tornado-force winds, an H1N1 pandemic would present many of the same challenges to Iowa businesses as a natural disaster.  (October 10, Des Moines Business Record)

Some worry about safety of new flu vaccine

Jodi Tindell takes her children to the doctor for all their immunizations. Hepatitis B; polio; measles, mumps and rubella. The Tindell kids even roll up their sleeves for annual seasonal flu shots. But her children won’t be receiving the new H1N1 influenza, or swine flu, vaccine.  (October 11, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier)

Black honored for supporting hospitals

Dennis Black has been named the Iowa Hospital Association Legislator of the Year in the Iowa Senate. (October 14, Newton Daily News) 

U.S.  Headlines 

Health insurers emerge as Obama’s top foe in reform effort

Attacks on the leading Democratic reform plan this week by the insurance lobby left little doubt that two of the most powerful institutions involved in the debate — the White House and the nation’s insurance companies — have abandoned any real hope of forging a compromise. What was a tenuous truce has turned quickly into an all-out battle, with both sides ratcheting up the hostilities.  (October 14, Washington Post)

Cedars-Sinai radiation overdoses went unseen at several points

Late last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Cedars-Sinai revealed that 206 stroke patients who received scans at the prestigious Los Angeles hospital were overdosed with radiation. Now doctors and safety experts around the country face a troubling question: In an era of supposedly fail-safe medical technology, how did the problem go undetected for 18 months? (October 14, Los Angeles Times)

Minneapolis-area healthcare rivals to work together

Two of Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN, area’s biggest medical groups will collaborate in a seven-year effort to slow the rise of medical costs. HealthPartners and Allina Hospitals and Clinics announced that they plan to try out new payment formulas to reward quality and improve patient satisfaction, ultimately producing lower costs in the area. Allina is the Twin Cities’ biggest clinic and hospital group; HealthPartners is the state’s third-biggest health insurer and also has a chain of clinics.  (October 14, Minneapolis Star Tribune)

Health bills in congress won’t fix doctor shortage

Even as Congress moves to expand health insurance coverage to millions of Americans, it’s doing little to ensure there will be enough primary care doctors to meet the expected surge in demand for treatment, experts say.  The American Academy of Family Physicians predicts that the shortage of family doctors will reach 40,000 in the next 10 years, as medical schools send about half the needed number of graduates into primary care medicine. (October 12, Kaiser Health News)

Mayo Clinic policy on Medicare, Medicaid raises questions

The Mayo Clinic is no longer accepting some Medicare and Medicaid patients, raising new questions about whether it is too selective to serve as a model for healthcare reform. The White House has repeatedly praised Mayo and other medical centers, many of which are in the Upper Midwest, that perform well in Dartmouth College rankings showing wide disparities in how much hospitals spend on Medicare patients.  (October 13, Los Angeles Times)