Featuring hospital and health care headlines from the media and Web from December 12-December 18.

Iowa Headlines

Harkin takes to radio, TV to back bill
The Iowa Democrat has been dispatched to ease the concerns of liberal groups and leaders who have voiced their frustrations with compromises the Democratic leadership has made to hold together its tenuous coalition. (December 18, Des Moines Register)

Union membership to decide whether to back Culver, leader says
Whether Iowa’s largest public employee union will work to help Democratic Gov. Chet Culver in his re-election bid will be up to the members of the union, its leader said Friday. GOP challengers are lining up for the chance to take on Culver, who is expected to seek his second term next year. Support for Culver from at least one union is not yet assured. (December 11, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier)

Official: UIHC turns financial corner
University of Iowa Health Care officials say the hospital has “turned the corner” after months of financial woes, and they are prepared to move forward with work on a new outpatient clinic in Coralville.  (December 17, Iowa City Press-Citizen)

Allen Child Protection Center to open next year
Each year more than 100 sexually or physically abused Black Hawk County children are sent to Cedar Rapids for a forensic interview and treatment. Nina Thomas has made that journey to the St. Luke’s Child Protection Center with several young people. She has seen the extra stress placed on the families and the child. (December 14, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier)

We should shoot for higher Iowa health ranking
Just as the Hawks were a few plays from maybe making the Top 5, Iowans could be a few calories or a couple of packs of cigarettes away from sliding further down the rankings.  (December 14, Dubuque Telegraph Herald)

Iowa set to get Mercy Capitol keys
The people of Iowa are about to become the new owners of an old hospital. The east-side Des Moines facility, most recently known as Mercy Capitol, “is not the greatest building,” said Ray Walton, director of the state Department of Administrative Services. But it’s in a valuable location, just northeast of the Statehouse, and it could house about 400 government employees now using rented space elsewhere. (December 14, Des Moines Register)

Experts weigh in on health care reform
If Mid-Iowa is to get meaningful health care reform, there has to be a focus on what’s causing spiraling costs, and Iowa must get a better level of Medicare funding, according to experts who addressed the Ames Chamber of Commerce Friday. Four panelists from the fields of medicine, politics and private health insurance spoke to a group of about 50 people at Mary Greeley Medical Center. (December 12, Ames Tribune)

Broadlawns’ Hall fights audit release
The chief pharmacist at Polk County’s public hospital wants a judge to block release of documents related to allegations the pharmacy was mismanaged.  Mark Hall has asked for an injunction to prevent Broadlawns Medical Center from giving The Des Moines Register copies of the documents, including an internal audit of how the pharmacy tracked drug supplies. (December 17, Des Moines Register)

U.S.  Headlines

Hospital, physician lobbyists fought Medicare buy-in plan
The proposal to allow people ages 55 to 64 to buy insurance through Medicare — one of the most significant ideas to emerge from the Senate’s side of the debate — appeared and vanished in a mere six days.  (December 16, Washington Post)

Unified, yes; united, no
As the new nursing union behemoth – the National Nurses United – is unveiled, some of its new members aren’t exactly jumping for joy. (December 16, Modern Healthcare)

California hospital vote pits upstart union against colossus
Hundreds of workers at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital are scheduled to go to the polls in a closely watched union vote pitting the giant Service Employees International (SEIU) against an upstart rival. The balloting at has drawn scrutiny in labor circles nationwide because of the nasty underlying conflict between the SEIU and its breakaway competitor, the National Union of Healthcare Workers. (December 17, Los Angeles Times)

Public cooling to health-care reform as debate drags on, poll finds
Anew Washington Post-ABC News poll finds the public generally fearful that a revamped healthcare system would bring higher costs while worsening the quality of their care. A bare majority of Americans still believe government action is needed to control runaway healthcare costs and expand coverage to the roughly 46 million people without insurance.  (December 16, Washington Post)

Top 10 health care issues in 2010
Some might say that there’s no juice left to squeeze from the cost of providing care, but a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute says health leaders are going to have to try.  (December 18, HealthLeaders Media)

Smoking rate drops in Massachusetts, drawing attention
When Massachusetts began offering virtually free treatments to help poor residents of the state stop smoking in 2006, proponents hoped the new Medicaid program would someday reap benefits. But state officials never expected it would happen so soon. (December 17, New York Times)

New hospital debuts in Minnesota; patients wanted
The construction crews have gone. Balloons and bouquets dot the lobby, and fish swim placidly in an aquarium near the lounge. Now the Twin Cities’ newest hospital just needs some patients.  (December 16, Minneapolis Star Tribune)

Massachusetts ER policy passes checkup
A new Massachusetts policy requiring crowded hospital emergency rooms to accept all patients delivered by ambulance has not worsened conditions, as some doctors had feared. According to an analysis by state public health officials, the average time patients spent in 75 of the state’s emergency rooms remained about the same since the rules went into effect in January 2009. (December 14, Boston Globe)

Immigrants lose lawsuit against Atlanta hospital
Efforts to force the public hospital here to continue providing free dialysis treatment to a group of immigrants, most of them illegal, suffered a setback on Tuesday when a judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging the recent closing of the hospital’s outpatient renal clinic. (December 15, New York Times)

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It’s too big for a bow, but Mount Ayr is getting one sweet present this holiday season.

Ringgold County Hospital will open in its new facility on December 20. The hospital replaces a building that was built nearly 60 years ago.

The new facility will provide many advantages compared to the old hospital, which was built in 1951. One of the most important aspects of the new building is the efficiency of space. The new medical complex is 61,000 square feet, a vast improvement over the old, land-locked hospital with 38,000 square feet.  With the additional space, many of the medical areas and services will become more departmentalized.

The new one-level facility will also have two entrances. The south entrance will be for patients, visitors and employees, the north is for delivery and ambulance services. The helipad will be in its own area on the north side of the building. This will eliminate the problem of re-routing traffic and parking that existed at the old facility, where he helipad is in the center of the parking lot.

Other new additions patients can expect to see will be 16 private patient rooms and seven dialysis stations. With the seven dialysis stations, it will ease the problem at the old facility of patients having to start dialysis treatment at 4:30 a.m.so everyone can get through. There will also be radiant heating panels above each station.

Construction on the new hospital began in October 2008.

Ringgold County Hospital employs more than 120 people and has a $7.2 million impact on the area.

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Amy McDaniel
Chief Financial Officer
Wright Medical Center, Clarion

There is no bigger hero at Wright Medical Center than Amy McDaniel, the hospital’s Chief Financial Officer.  Typically, you don’t look to the CFO to be a hospital hero, but not every CFO is like Amy. 

Amy is patient and welcoming, and is always willing to listen and encourage anyone.  She does her job very well and is the picture of professionalism even in these challenging economic times.  She always has a calming positive outlook, is able to look at the big picture, and is very direct and honest in her approach.  In addition, she is a senior leader and manages several departments as parts of the hospital’s “Finance Pillar.”  The pillar she chairs receives all the employee cost-saving ideas.  Those recommendations are then translated into a dollar saving potential and passed on to the departments to implement.

Throughout the years, Amy has helped to grow and lead Wright Medical Center in ways that most small rural hospitals are not accustomed to.  Wright Medical Center has enjoyed phenomenal growth and success and a large part of this is due to Amy’s ability to think very much out of the box.  She tirelessly sought out financing models, grants and ways around conventional ways of thinking that did not move the hospital forward.

Amy also has a busy personal life with a police officer husband and four children.  A daughter, twin boys another girl and a couple of big dogs make their family complete.

Amy is the model of Wright Medical Center’s culture and values.  Every day, she illustrates and mentors what we can all accomplish together with the right attitude. 

The hospital is proud of the “Hospital Hero” that Amy McDaniel truly is.  Because if there really is a “Wonder Woman,” she is working as the CFO at Wright Medical Center!

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Featuring hospital and health care headlines from the media and Web from December 5-December 11.

Iowa Headlines

Shawn Johnson donates $50k to hospital
The West Des Moines native and Olympic gold medalist won the money on the celebrity version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Johnson said the money is just the start of an endowment to help the Child Life services build a recreational center.  (December 5, KCCI)

Small-town hospital gets big-city upgrades
Buena Vista Regional Medical Center is now the proud owner the 3Tesla MRI, which is the most powerful and accurate imaging machine available. This machine cuts patient’s testing time from one hour down to about 18 minutes and its one of only three machines in Iowa.  (December 6, KCAU)

Plows usher mom-to-be from Grinnell to Des Moines
Van Ersvelde, 34 weeks pregnant with her second child, spent more than two hours in the back of an ambulance as it crawled from Grinnell to Des Moines with state snowplows escorting it the whole way. An ambulance took her to Grinnell Regional Medical Center, but because she has a rare blood condition, officials decided she needed to go to a bigger hospital.  (December 10, Des Moines Register)

‘Ponseti wanted all children to be healthy’
A crowd of about 500 people attended a celebration of life in honor of orthopedics pioneer Ignacio Ponseti in a ballroom at the Coralville Marriott Hotel and Conference Center. Colleagues remembered him as not only a brilliant medical mind and visionary in his field, but also as a dedicated father, husband and friend.  (December 7, Iowa City Press-Citizen)

U.S.  Headlines

Finding the nerve to cut health costs
It is abundantly clear that our medical system wastes enormous amounts of money on health care that doesn’t make people healthier. Hospitals that practice more intensive medicine, to take one example, get no better results than more conservative hospitals, research shows. And while the insured receive better care and are healthier than the uninsured, the lavishly insured — those households with so-called Cadillac plans — are not better off than households with merely good insurance. (December 8, New York Times)

Temp firms a magnet for unfit nurses
An investigation by the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times found dozens of instances in which staffing agencies skimped on background checks or ignored warnings from hospitals about sub-par nurses on their payrolls. Some hired nurses sight unseen, without even conducting an interview.  (December 6, Los Angeles Times)

Labor board OKs challenge to SEIU
A federal labor board decision this week has given a major victory to a breakaway union vying with the giant Service Employees International Union to represent tens of thousands of California healthcare workers.  (December 5, Los Angeles Times)

Surgeon general calls for more minorities in health care
U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin said during a conference on health disparities in Atlanta that the nation must reverse the downward trend of minorities attending medical, dental and nursing schools. Benjamin said the recent downward trend in minority admissions follows years of gains in these areas. She cited a study that said minorities make up only 6 percent of U.S. physicians. (December 5, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Musical surgeon examines the OR soundtrack
Surgeons have long listened to music while they work, saying it helps them relax and concentrate. But now Claudius Conrad, MD, an accomplished pianist and a senior surgical resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, is scientifically testing how music affects surgeons, their patients, and even relatives in the waiting room. The goal is to understand whether music can improve results of surgery, and whether it might be used as a medical treatment. (December 7, Boston Globe)

Trial puts focus on kids’ care in Florida
Speaking at a conference on Medicaid in June 2007, Florida’s healthcare chief at the time, Dr. Andrew Agwunobi, bemoaned the “critical’” shortage of doctors willing to accept payment from the state’s insurance program for the needy.  But two years later, under questioning from lawyers who sued seeking to reform the insurance program, Agwunobi repeatedly insisted he couldn’t recall whether there were enough doctors who accept Medicaid reimbursement — or whether he ever made statements about the program’s shortcomings.  (December 7, Miami Herald)

Harvard picks top 10 health stories for 2009
Swine flu, health reform and debates over breast and prostate screening tests are among the top 10 health stories identified by the Harvard Health Letter in its annual list. The Harvard University publication develops a top 10 list each year with help from doctors on its editorial board.  (December 5, Healthcare IT News)

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IHA will be hosting its first Social Media and Health Care Conference on February 9, 2010 at Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines.  Certain to be one of the conference highlights (and there will be several) is a presentation from Lee Aase of Mayo Clinic.

For those of you who are not familiar with Lee, he is a pioneer of hospital social media.  When others were breaking social media ground with shovels, Lee fired up a front-end loader and has been plowing the way ever since.  While Lee is understanding about hospitals hesitating on social media, he has little patience for those who suffer from paralysis by over-analysis, as he discussed in this recent interview: 

“Don’t let strategy become an excuse for inaction. Often organizations wait to become involved in social media until they have thought through every imaginable scenario, and that’s fine, to a point. But too frequently they go way beyond due diligence to a social media form of hypochondria or paranoia.”

 Just as important, most social media tools come at virtually no cost:

 “If you spend any money to communicate with employees or customers, why wouldn’t you take advantage of free tools that help you do it better?”

 The IHA Social Media and Health Care Conference is going to be a full-day of excellent presentations from Lee Aase and others who will introduce you to social media, help you understand how it impacts health care and how your hospital can benefit, show you how to measure results and give you the opportunity to hear from hospitals that have stepped boldly into this new frontier. 

Register now while space is still available!

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