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

Iowa News

Dance marathon: feeling like a million
Tired and sweaty, hundreds of Dance Marathon participants crowded into the IMU Main Lounge this past weekend. After almost 24 hours of dancing came the announcement they’d been waiting for. Dance Marathon leaders took the stage to reveal the group had raised $1,058,658.16 this year for cancer treatment at the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital, the biggest annual total achieved in the group’s 16-year history. (University of Iowa Daily Iowan)

Food-stamp aid collected by inmates costs state
Thirty percent of the inmates in the Polk County Jail last spring were illegally collecting food-stamp benefits, a state investigation shows. Federal regulations prohibit people who have been jailed for 30 days or more from collecting food-stamp benefits while incarcerated. (Des Moines Register)

Waterloo woman arrested after assaulting several people at hospital
Waterloo Police were called to Covenant Medical Center, Danae Nelson, was reportedly at the hosptial to visit her child who was being treated. Nelson became upset when she was denied access after she refused to don a required medical mask for contamination purposes. Nelson then forced her way into the patient room where she assaulted several people in the room including her husband, a DHS worker and Covenant personnel. (KCRG)

U.S. News

Obama plans bipartisan summit on health care
President Obama said Sunday that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health care session at the White House to be televised live this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse. (New York Times)

Health care lobby looks to jobs bill as vehicle for Medicare fixes
A handful of provisions affecting physicians, hospitals, nursing homes and other Medicare providers expired Jan. 1 and the clock is running down on others. With healthcare reform on the back burner as Congress turns to jobs, the budget and other matters, provider lobbyists are anxious for an alternative — and the jobs bill that will hit the Senate floor next week is an appealing target. (The Hill)

Nurse anesthetists say they practice safely without physician supervision
Nurse anesthetists across the country are vehemently defending their ability to administer anesthesia to Medicare patients without physician supervision, saying there’s never been a study showing the practice to be unsafe, as alleged by two large physician groups who filed a lawsuit last week. (HealthLeaders News)

California cracks down on discount health plans
Some of the discounters fraudulently market themselves as insurance, while preying on the poor, the elderly and others who urgently need care, officials say. “They’re basically cheating poor people,” said Dr. Dev GnanaDev, immediate past president of the California Medical Assn. Plan executives bristle at such criticism. They say a few bad apples have tarnished an industry that offers reliable — and relatively inexpensive — services. (Los Angeles Times)

Innovative hospital program helps to match doctors with patients
Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Dallas-Fort Worth has launched Doc Shop, a new marketing program to connect patients with obstetrician-gynecologists modeled after the speed-dating phenomenon that lets single men and women meet multiple potential dates in brief time blocks. (Fierce Healthcare)