by Scott McIntyre on Monday, January 25, 2010
Leave a CommentIn its Sunday opinion section, the Des Moines Register accused Iowa Department of Public Health (DPH) Director Tom Newton of “suggesting what Iowans don’t know won’t hurt them” with regard to H1N1. You see, what the Register doesn’t like is DPH’s unwillingness to play fast and loose with information about Iowans who have died of H1N1.
What DPH has done is protect those identities at a level that would be appreciated by health care providers, all of whom are entrusted with vast amounts of confidential medical information. This has frustrated Register reporters and editors who, frankly, seem willing to report anything they can find out, at least when it comes to H1N1 victims. Think otherwise? Let this illustrate the depth of the Register’s concern: “Releasing ages, sex and health conditions might let snoops figure out the identity of flu victims, but so what?”
Meanwhile, just a few column inches away, the Register praises Senator Amanda Ragan for introducing a bill that would loosen the rules that DPH follows regarding releasing private information. If the Register editorial writers had only bothered to read the news pages, they would see that Ragan’s bill does not necessarily mean more information will be released, only that it could be released. Just like Newton, Senator Ragan’s first and highest concern is with patient privacy.
The Register believes more information is always better (this is where that newspaper selling priority kicks in) and is obviously ready and willing compromise individual privacy in its quest of “news.” On the other hand, both Newton and Ragan clearly have other priorities — the right priorities.
Like it or not, the Department of Public Health’s Job 1 is to safeguard the people of Iowa. DPH — and Iowa’s health care providers — have done an admirable job of educating the public on how to protect itself from H1N1. Nothing that DPH has chosen to withhold about H1N1 fatalities would have increased that level of protection. On the contrary, the important work DPH has to do would be undermined and distracted when the “so what” media feeds speculation by playing amateur epidemiologist.
Patient privacy is a top priority for Iowa’s hospitals and the Department of Public Health. And we can all be thankful that Register editors are not in charge of deciding whose medical information gets released.
by Scott McIntyre on Friday, January 22, 2010
Featuring hospital and health care headlines from the media and Web.
Iowa News
Culver looks to D.C. for help in reducing budget burden
Iowa Gov. Chet Culver is looking for more help from the federal government to patch up education and health care spending. Culver asked a Senate appropriations subcommittee on Thursday for a second round of economic stimulus money. Later, he appealed to the Obama administration to ease rules for existing aid that could force the state to reverse some spending cuts. (Des Moines Register)
Few line up for H1N1 vaccine
In the past week, H1N1 flu clinics organized by the county health department and University of Northern Iowa received under-whelming responses. “I think there’s a general complacency, a general thinking that seasonal influenza is over, it’s behind us,” said Bruce Meisinger, Black Hawk County’s disease surveillance manager. (Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier)
Genesis reinstates standard visitation policies
Genesis Medical Center campuses in Davenport, DeWitt, Iowa, and Silvis, Ill., will reinstate standard visitation policies beginning Friday. The vaccination of a significant number of people in the region against the H1N1 flu and seasonal influenza has helped make it possible for Genesis to return to its standard visitation policy, hospital officials said. (Quad-City Times)
Mercy Medical Center print shop to close
Mercy Medical Center plans to disband its eight-person print shop in March, officials say. Mike Krysl, Mercy marketing and communications director, said the hospital’s leadership decided the closure is in the best interests of the organization, which is focusing on services directly related to patient care. (Sioux City Journal)
U.S. News
New Nebraska hospitals could get more scrutiny
A bill has been introduced that calls for a two-year moratorium on applications and licenses for new hospitals beginning Sept. 1 and going through Aug. 31, 2012. The moratorium wouldn’t include Critical Access Hospitals. (Lincoln Journal Star)
Democrats are urged to preserve broad health care overhaul
Even as congressional Democrats began examining ways to scale back their far-reaching health legislation, a wave of consumer groups, patient advocates and doctors on Thursday called on Democrats not to abandon the comprehensive health overhaul they’ve worked so long to pass. (Los Angeles Times)
Poll: Regroup on health care, most say
A majority of Americans say President Obama and congressional Democrats should suspend work on the health care bill that has been on the verge of passage and consider alternatives that would draw more Republican support, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds. (USA Today)
Why do we give to disaster relief?
Children are selling pink lemonade in Austin, Texas. A Minnesota couple is giving away money that they saved for their wedding. Chelsea Clinton hosted a spinning class in New York on Thursday with front-row “seats” going for $1,000. So, why do we open our wallets for strangers, like Haitian earthquake survivors? Is it out of empathy? Guilt? Compassion? Or something else? (CNN)
As records go digital, cultures clash
A group of Broward County doctors looking to switch to electronic medical records say the result has been a massive headache: surprise charges, inadequate training and even blocked access to patient files. For his part, vendor Joe Castranova says that the doctors got exactly what they signed up for and that some still owe him money. He’s turned some of them over to collections. (Kaiser Health News)
by Scott McIntyre on Thursday, January 21, 2010
Featuring hospital and health care headlines from the media and Web.
Iowa News
Grassley fields questions at Town Hall meeting
When citizens expressed concern about the House and Senate not listening to the concerns of citizens on the health bill now being considered, Sen. Grassley said that you have to realize that “Washington, D.C. is an island surrounded by reality.” (Kalona News)
Braley downplays impact of Massachusetts Senate race
“Well, I think you can’t take a single senate race and try to make strong judgments about what that means for the rest of the country, or you could look at the house race that we won in upstate New York that we won recently and try to turn that into a referendum on the Obama agenda,” Braley said. (Radio Iowa)
Trinity part of statewide Haitian relief effort through Project C.U.R.E.
Iowa Health System and its affiliates, including Trinity Regional Health System in the Quad-Cities, have donated more than $30,000 in medical supplies and goods to the Haitian relief efforts. These supplies will be delivered Friday to Project Commission on Urgent Relief & Equipment (CURE) to its depot in Denver. From there, the supplies will be shipped to Haiti as quickly as possible. (Trinity Regional Health System Press Release)
Dedicated doctor saving lives in Haiti
A powerful 6.1 magnitude aftershock rocked Haiti Wednesday, a week after the first deadly earthquake. Still, St. Luke’s emergency room physician Rick Colwell is packing his bags for the island. The dedicated doctor who goes in as everyone else gets out; Haiti will be his third trip abroad to help victims of devastation. (KPTH)
Mercy selling homes for a dollar
Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa is expanding next spring. As part of that expansion, the hospital is hoping to turn a block of homes into more parking spaces. While buying one of the thirteen homes will only cost you a dollar, the buyer is responsible for what happens after the sale is done. (KIMT)
U.S. News
Pelosi says House cannot pass Senate’s health-care bill without changes
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the Senate will have to amend its version of a health-care reform bill before Democrats in her chamber would be willing to vote for it. “I don’t think it’s possible to pass the Senate bill in the House,” Pelosi told reporters after a morning meeting with her caucus. “I don’t see the votes for it at this time.” (Washington Post)
Why public support for health care faltered
The health care proposals in Congress that supporters were touting a year ago lack many of the easy-to-sell benefits, which became victims of the lengthy process of trying to win over wavering lawmakers, appeasing powerful special-interest groups and addressing concerns about the heavily burdened Treasury. (Kaiser Health News)
Another health care obstacle awaits in states
Republican attorneys general and governors in more than a dozen states are threatening to file suit to block a particular provision of the Senate bill that gives a special financial deal to Nebraska. Several have expressed interest in a broader legal challenge to the overhaul even if that provision is removed. (Wall Street Journal)
Resources few, urgency constant for N.E. trauma doctors in Haiti
It is a world apart from the exacting standards of the high temples of modern medicine in Boston and other US cities where members of two disaster teams now working in a Port-au-Prince school yard usually ply their trade. Here, they conduct surgery inside a sweltering tent without high-beam surgical lights or stools for the surgeons. Supplies dangle from the walls, and what passes for an operating table doesn’t move up and down. (Boston Globe)
How wasteful is your health care delivery?
Some doctors bristle at pay-for-performance metrics. Other doctors, however, jump at the chance to find out how they measure up to their peers. The competitive instincts that got them into and out of medical school and residencies kick in, and they try to improve areas where they may be lagging behind the norms. (HealthLeaders News)
Health IT czar rethinks national data exchange
David Blumenthal talks about making national network accessible to small health care providers and also shares thoughts on the Massachusetts election, e-medical records use and the health IT workforce. (InformationWeek)
by Scott McIntyre on Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Featuring hospital and health care headlines from the media and Web.
Iowa News
Local sources weigh in on health care reform
Mary Greeley Medical Center CEO Brian Dieter said hospital administrators are interested in parts of the bills that move away from the fee-for-service doctrine and toward accountable care associations. “These are the plans that would coordinate the best care that’s right for the patient, instead of the old way we deliver care: do a procedure, turn in a bill, get money,” Dieter said. (Ames Tribune)
Update: Power fails, pedestrians fall as ice thickens
Reports of power outages are coming in from across the state with ice accumulating on everything and pedestrians taking baby steps to cross parking lots and negotiate sidewalks. Thousands of customers of MidAmerican Energy in Iowa were without power at 12:30 p.m. Many customers of Alliant Energy in Iowa also lost electricity. (Des Moines Register)
Area continues Haitian relief
The parent organization of Mercy Medical Center-Dubuque, Trinity Health of Novi, Mich., is donating $100,000 to the relief efforts being coordinated by Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Medical Mission Board and Project Haiti. Mercy-Dubuque and other Trinity Health ministry organizations will also be contributing supplies and medicine through the Catholic Medical Mission Board. (Dubuque Telegraph Herald)
Facebook kidney donor update: both men on the mend
If you were Nick Etten’s Facebook Friend before December 16, you were a charter member. Since then, his life became “kind of a little nutty.” On December 17, Nick allowed surgeons to cut him open in four places and remove a kidney — all to answer a friend’s call on Facebook to help out his ailing dad. (KCRG)
U.S. News
With 60th vote gone, a search for a new strategy
Republican Scott Brown’s victory has deprived President Obama and his party of the crucial 60th Senate vote they were counting on to pass a sweeping overhaul of the US health care system in the coming weeks, sending Democratic leaders racing to devise an emergency alternative strategy and creating the very real possibility the effort could collapse. (Boston Globe)
Haiti’s health crisis deepens as recovery efforts continue
As the days roll into a week since a devastating earthquake in Haiti, the health needs for survivors in the impoverished country are changing. Many are still vulnerable to injury and death, but only in new ways. (USA Today)
Refugees from the capital swamp a model rural hospital
Much about modern Haiti is explained by the rough 35-mile journey from Port-au-Prince to Zanmi Lasante, Creole for “Partners in Health.” This oasis-like hospital, made famous by the 2003 bestseller “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” sits on a dirt road in Haiti’s central plateau, one of the poorest regions of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. (Wall Street Journal)
In Haiti, reporters who double as doctors face a new balancing act
Some of the most visible American television correspondents in Haiti aren’t just reporting the story. They’re actively participating in it in an unusual way — performing surgeries, providing medical treatment and even delivering babies on camera. (Washington Post)
Health care bill may curtail doctor-owned hospitals in Texas
Dallas-based Reliant Healthcare Partners’ plan to build 13 of the niche
Hospitals in Texas might turn out to have one major problem: It recruited physicians as investors. Health care legislation that soon may be passed by Congress would halt the growth of physician-owned hospitals and prevent any more from opening after Aug. 1. (Dallas Morning News)
Reasoning through the rationing of end-of-life care
Acknowledging that the idea of rationing health care, particularly at the end of life, may incite too much vitriol to get much rational consideration, a Johns Hopkins emeritus professor of neurology called for the start of a discussion anyway, with an opinion piece featured in this month’s issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics. (Johns Hopkins press release)
by Scott McIntyre on Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Earlier this week, Grinnell Regional Medical Center announced the good news about setting a record for contributions to its annual fund. In a down year for the economy, this could be considered an amazing achievement. But here at IHA, we are hearing similar news from other hospitals. At the same time, many Iowa hospitals are at various stages of construction, whether it be partial or large-scale remodels or entire hospital replacements. Nearly all of these projects were made possible, at least in part, by community philanthropy (as well as contributions from the hospital employees themselves).
The timing and support of these efforts says a lot about where hospitals and health care stand among Iowa’s priorities. Clearly, with 118 hospitals, more than 70,000 employees and $5.8 billion in economic impact, Iowans recognize the value that these institutions bring to their communities, our state and everyone’s quality of life.
Iowans are known for their generosity, but they are also thoughtful about their giving, especially in these times. Our hospitals continue to be a sound investment. And for those who want to contribute, hospitals offer their own legacy of giving and growth that instills community pride and individual achievement.
