Featuring hospital and health care headlines from the media and Web.

Iowa News

Iowa’s congressional delegate mulls future of health care reform
President Obama is urging Democrats in congress not to “walk away” from health care reform and Iowa Democrats who’re serving in the House and Senate appear to be on the same page.  (Radio Iowa)

TEAM Opens New Des Moines Data Center
TEAM Technologies and the Iowa Health System held a grand opening for the $15 million first phase of a 46,000 square foot data center in Waukee, Iowa. The facility will house the patient and employee records for Iowa Health and be managed by TEAM Companies, which is building a network of data centers in second-tier markets in the upper Midwest. (Data Center Knowledge)

Back seat belt regulation a step closer to reality in Iowa
Vehicle safety proponents are making a new push to expand Iowa’s seat-belt law to include back-seat passengers under 18 years of age. A Senate subcommittee Thursday approved a measure that would change the current law requiring the use of seat belts, safety harnesses or child restraint systems for back-seat passengers under age 10 to cover youngster in the 11-17 age range effective July 1. (Sioux City Journal)

Harkin: Taking the temperature of rural health care
Patients and doctors in rural areas face an entirely different set of obstacles than their urban counterparts. On top of that, approximately 247,000 people, or 8 percent of Iowa’s population, cannot access a primary care provider due to shortages in their communities. And because rural Americans are more likely to be self employed, they are less likely to have employer-based health insurance and prescription drug coverage. (IowaPolitics)

U.S. News

After Obama speech, Democrats confused about path ahead
Democrats left town early Thursday weighing their next steps on everything from the stalled health-care bill to competing job-creation packages. Before they departed, some criticized Obama for casting blame on the Senate, where moderates felt singled out for ridicule. Others sought to shift the burden to the GOP. Still others said the president’s calls for bipartisanship were wishful thinking and suggested that daring Republicans to block their ambitious agenda would set up a “liberating” contrast for November’s midterm elections. (Washington Post)

Health care reform: Can Mayo emerge a winner?
Despite a long history of staying out of politics, Mayo catapulted out of southern Minnesota and onto the national stage to join Washington’s debate over health care reform. The goal: Get Medicare to reward the most efficient hospitals and pay less to the least efficient — cutting waste, raising quality and saving money all around. (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

AG finds clout of hospitals drives cost
Massachusetts insurance companies pay some hospitals and doctors twice as much money as others for essentially the same patient care, according to a preliminary report by Attorney General Martha Coakley. It points to the market clout of the best-paid providers as a main driver of the state’s spiraling health care costs. (Boston Globe)

Hospitals not ready for swell of data to come
A survey sponsored by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and Dell has found that the data centers of small and medium-sized hospitals in North America, Europe, and China are not prepared for the “wave of data” that will soon be inundating them. (Healthcare IT News)

Haiti aid efforts go awry in the ‘convoy to nowhere’
It’s not typical for so much to go wrong on a major operation like this—in fact, on Thursday, the Army successfully delivered the cargo, in the largest single-day food distribution here. But a diary of Wednesday’s journey reads like an anthology of the obstacles stifling efforts to deliver aid since an earthquake turned the Haitian capital to rubble two weeks ago. (Wall Street Journal)

GDP expands at 5.7% rate
Gross domestic product rose a seasonally adjusted 5.7% annual rate October through December, the Commerce Department said Friday in its first estimate of fourth-quarter GDP. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast 4.8% GDP growth during the fall. (Wall Street Journal)