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

Iowa News

Cedar Rapids held up as a model for health cost containment
Cedar Rapids was one of only 10 United States communities highlighted in a health care cost project called “How Did They do That?” by the Dartmouth Institute and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. The project identified for study 10 communities in the United States that offer high quality health care at costs well below the national average. (KCRG)

UI doctor returns from mission to Haiti
A physician at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics returned home Sunday after spending 11 days in Haiti. Dr. Chris Buresh is no stranger to the destitute conditions in the country, but admits he wasn’t prepared for what he saw during his latest medical mission. The images of bodies strewn throughout the countryside are something he wished he would not have seen. (Radio Iowa)

Loebsack sees trouble for health bill
Six months ago, health care was one of the first things Loebsack brought up in visits to Ottumwa. It wasn’t that high on the list during a visit to the Courier this week. What looked like a sure thing in July is now in doubt as Democrats face a series of setbacks at the ballot box. (Ottumwa Courier)

Obama seeks new Omaha VA hospital
Omaha’s aging VA Medical Center would be replaced with a new hospital, to serve Nebraska and western Iowa, under a proposal made Monday by the Obama administration. The president’s 2011 budget request includes $56 million for the design of the new facility, a major step forward in the effort to address serious infrastructure problems at the only Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in the state. (Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil)

Talk to me: Speech recognition streamlines clinical communication
Speech recognition technology is well on its way to becoming one of the most widely adopted technologies in healthcare settings because it can save documentation time and can boost both the availability and accuracy of patient records. Hospitals in Cedar Rapids and Marengo are among the users. (CMIO)

U.S. News

Obama’s struggle with health-care reform echoes Clintons’ failure in 1994
Obamacare in trouble? I’ve seen this story before. It may not end in the way the Clinton effort imploded in 1994. But a look back helps answer this question: How does health-care reform go from being an apple pie issue with voters to a lightning rod for discontent? (Washington Post)

States restart health care push
Lawmakers in at least two states, California and Missouri, have introduced legislation for the current session to create government-backed coverage for state residents. In others, including Virginia and New Jersey, legislators are hoping to tweak existing state programs to include more people. (Wall Street Journal)

States cutting back special programs for the uninsured
Sherie Brace fears the coming of summer. That’s when a special health insurance program for low-income adults in Washington state is set to close, ending coverage for her and about 65,000 others. (Kaiser Health News)

U.S. will reimburse hospitals that treat Haitians
Military medical evacuation flights had been suspended for five days after Florida officials complained that their hospitals were being overwhelmed with patients suffering from devastating burns, head and spinal cord trauma, amputations and other wounds, and that no plan had been put in place to reimburse the hospitals for the care they were providing. (New York Times)

Lancet renounces study linking autism and vaccines
It took 12 years, but the medical journal the Lancet has retracted once and for all a controversial paper that drew a link between vaccines and autism and helped fuel a backlash against immunization of children. (National Public Radio)

New ways to calculate risks of surgery
Risk calculators, used by heart surgeons for several years, are now being developed for other surgical specialties. The American College of Surgeons recently introduced calculators for surgery of the colon and pancreas, and is designing similar tools for 18 other procedures, including gastric bypass, hernia repair and prostate surgery. The calculators use data from more than one million patient records gathered as part of the group’s National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, which works with hospitals to reduce surgical errors and complications. (Wall Street Journal)