Featuring hospital and health care headlines from the media and Web from January 8-15.

Iowa Headlines

Tweener hospitals like KAH hold their breaths
Keokuk Area Hospital administrators are waiting to see how provisions in the final version of a health care reform bill will affect it and other “tweener” hospitals – if and when a health bill is signed into law.  (January 14, Keokuk Daily Gate City)

Iowa doctors’ group angered Medicare pay isn’t improving
Congress appears poised to substantially increase physician pay in five Western states, but not in Iowa, which long has had some of the lowest doctor salaries in the country. (January 12, Des Moines Register)

Sioux Center Hospital buys land for new campus
The Sioux Center Hospital and Health Center Avera announced this morning that is has purchased 40 acres on land on which to build a new facility and campus. The land deal was finalized on Dec. 29, according to a news release from hospital chief executive, Kayleen Lee. She said the hospital has worked with Sioux Center Land Development to find and finance an appropriate site. (January 8, Sioux City Journal)

‘Even on a good day’ Haitian medical treatment minimal
A hospital stay for $5 per day sounds like a bargain, but not in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Karen Doy, supervisor of cardiac rehabilitation at Genesis Medical Center, Davenport, toured a hospital during a medical mission to Haiti and found it clean, but crowded, requiring patients to bring their own sheets for the $5 per day bed and their own food. (January 14, Quad-City Times)

School nurses give education a shot in the arm
The complexities school nurses began facing nearly a decade ago prompted the schools to join with Blank Children’s Hospital to ensure care for serious medical conditions was being given and liabilities for those problems leaned on a bigger organization.  (January 8, Des Moines Register)

Finley holds open house for new expansion
The $10.5 million expansion added two levels to the west wing of the hospital, with 20 additional patient rooms on each level. The construction is following Green Building Rating System by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification by adhering to various requirements for reconstruction, material choice and use.  (January 10, Dubuque Telegraph Herald)

Tom Arnold shares his own childhood abuse story during protection center tour
Actor and comedian Tom Arnold toured the St. Luke’s Child Protection Center in Cedar Rapids this afternoon. The Ottumwa native says the center is close to his heart because he is a survivor of sexual abuse. It was a pretty emotional hour for Arnold this afternoon because it brought back some painful childhood memories. But he is happy children are getting the help he didn’t have 40 years ago. (January 14, KCRG)

Birthing center partners with bank to put baby’s name in lights
First National Bank Midwest is helping the Mahaska Health Partnership Birthing Center welcome babies to the world. Approximately two years ago, First National Bank Midwest agreed to partner with the MHP Birthing Center to display newborn baby’s names on their marquee. (January 13, Oskaloosa Herald)

North Iowan retires after 42 years in health care
While the new year is a time of celebration, Jean Lunde is facing it with bittersweet emotions. Lunde, after 42 years of serving the Osage community in the health care industry, has retired from her position as a physician assistant at the Mitchell County Regional Health Center. (January 10, Mason City Globe Gazette)

‘Biggest Loser’ software from Ames
Body imaging software developed in Ames was featured in the season premiere of “The Biggest Loser” on NBC. A company called BodyViz, located in the Iowa State University Research Park, sells software that takes two-dimensional X-ray images from MRI and CAT scans and uses them to map out a three-dimensional image of a patient’s anatomy.  (January 13, Ames Tribune)

Mental hospital fire remembered 60 years later
At 2:40 a.m. on a damp, chilly night 60 Januarys ago, Roy Porter and Lester Schick were an instant away from crushing, fiery death. Flames were roaring from the windows of St. Elizabeth’s, a hospital mental ward on Davenport’s west side, when Schick, who was Davenport’s fire chief, shouted to Porter, “Come on.  Go in the front door.”  By the time the sun rose, 41 people were dead in the Quad-Cities’ worst fire disaster. (January 10, Quad-City Times)

U.S.  Headlines

Health care community rushes to aid Haiti earthquake victims
Four thousand health workers with Boston-based Partners In Health were already working in Haiti with the Ministry of Health when the earthquake hit earlier this week. They were working like they usually do, managing 10 hospitals and other facilities in the rural areas far to the north of Port-au-Prince, says communications director Andrew Marx. (January 15, HealthLeaders Media)

Katrina negligence lawsuit has implications for all hospitals
The lawsuit against Methodist Hospital is the first civil suit alleging negligence of a hospital staff in Katrina’s aftermath. It could pave the way for future lawsuits across the country for how hospitals react to a variety of emergencies, from viral pandemics to street riots, says Sean Ahrens, a project manager with Aon Corp., a risk-management and insurance advisory firm to hospitals. “A verdict against the hospital would open up a Pandora’s box for other unrelated incidents,” he says. (January 10, USA Today)

Rural hospital survives a fight with the feds
The five-year False Claims Act litigation against a 15-bed critical access hospital in remote Western Minnesota has ended. Wheaton Community Hospital and Medical Center, which serves a 1,600-population farm community, will not have to close. No more federal accusations that for six years, Wheaton defrauded the government. No more charges from the Office of Inspector General that the municipal facility unnecessarily admitted patients, some as old as 85, 91, and 96, or kept them hospitalized for “social” reasons or to raise “enough money to pay for the hospital addition.”  (January 13, HealthLeaders Media)

Hey, docs: Walgreens also says Medicaid doesn’t pay enough
Walgreens is threatening to stop filling Medicaid prescriptions at 64 of its 121 pharmacies in Washington state because of state cuts in payments. Walgreens, the biggest drug-store chain in the country, has been down this road before. It threatened to pull out of Medicaid programs last year before settlements were reached in Delaware and in an earlier dust-up in Washington state. (January 14, Wall Street Journal)

Facing end-of-life talks, doctors choose to wait
It’s a conversation that most people dread, doctors and patients alike. The cancer is terminal, time is short, and tough decisions loom — about accepting treatment or rejecting it, and choosing where and how to die. When is the right time — if there is one — to bring up these painful issues with someone who is terminally ill? (January 11, New York Times)

Twin Cities hospitals staunching flow of red ink
After a painful year of cutting jobs, freezing pay and delaying new construction, Twin Cities hospitals turned their businesses around in 2009 and appear to be back in the black. (January 11, Minneapolis Star Tribune)

Dozens of Michigan hospitals scrap trans fats
More than 100 Michigan hospitals have voluntarily eliminated industrial trans fats from their food service programs, the state’s hospital association announced today. The Michigan Health & Hospital Association started the campaign to remove trans fats from hospital vending machines, cafeterias and patient nutrition programs. (January 13, Detroit Free Press)

How ready are hospitals for ‘meaningful use’
So how close are hospitals to meeting the meaningful use requirements? About halfway, according to a report by Falls Church, VA-based Computer Sciences Corporation, which surveyed executives at 58 hospitals this past fall about their readiness to capture the HITECH incentives based on 50 indicators in five general categories:  the use of a certified product, criteria for meaningful use, standards adoption, quality reporting and privacy and security.  (January 12, HealthLeaders Media)

Hospitals criticize hospital records rules
At issue is a proposed regulation that spells out what hospitals and health providers must do in order to receive incentive payments for “meaningful use” of electronic health records. Thanks to the economic stimulus legislation, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will pay up to $17 billion starting in 2011 to hospitals, doctors and other health providers that meet these standards.  (January 10, Washington Business Journal)

Minnesota hospitals: Deaths, falls decrease but errors persist
Minnesota hospitals reported a significant drop in the number of fatal mistakes in 2009 and a dramatic reduction in fall-related injuries, according to the sixth annual report on hospital errors by the Minnesota Department of Health. In all, four people died as a result of “adverse events” at Minnesota hospitals in the 12 months ending October 2009, compared to 18 the year before. (January 14, Minneapolis Star Tribune)