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

Iowa News

Culver: Iowans should prep for floods
Spring flooding is all but inevitable this year, Gov. Chet Culver warned Thursday, urging Iowa residents to prepare for high water by assembling emergency kits and to consider buying flood insurance. The biggest dangers are in the basins of the Des Moines, Raccoon, Iowa and Cedar rivers, Culver said at a news conference. (Des Moines Register)

Orange City hospital developing new nursing home
Orange City is preparing for the future by developing a new senior care campus. The Orange City Area Health System purchased 37 acres to develop over the next few years. The 83-bed nursing home will be just west of the Landsmeer Ridge senior living community on the north side of the city. It will offer a village-style care center for the aging Baby Boomer generation. (KMEG)

Help for Haiti
Registered nurse Johnna Lindstrom of Oelwein, who works at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, recently decided to take her life quest a step above and beyond her regular duties. Although she knows she helps people every day in her current profession, she felt she could do even more by extending her skills to the people of earthquake ravaged Haiti. (Oelwein Daily Register)

Iowa Health System launching scholarship
Iowa Health System is partnering with the Des Moines branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to offer scholarships for under-represented high school seniors pursuing careers in health care. Each year, one student will be selected based on an essay about his or her commitment to improving America’s health care system. (Des Moines Register)

Lab tech develops good swimmers
Get involved, the boss said. Make a difference in the community, the boss said. Not only did Robert Volpe comply to the request of his employer, Fort Madison Community Hospital, but he was able to help out in an area he is familiar with: swimming. “The hospital is very big on employees being involved with the community,” Volpe said. “This (being swim coach) was a chance to get involved.”

Sunshine circle working to brighten the day at Finley Hospital
If you often visit loved ones in the hospital, you may be very familiar with the hospital gift shop. But what you may not know is at Finley Hospital in Dubuque all the profits made in the gift shop are donated back to the hospital. More than $58,000 was donated to Finley hospital in 2009. (KCRG)

U.S. News

Obama intensifies health-care efforts
An aide to President Obama urged lawmakers on Thursday to make substantial progress on his health-care plan before he leaves on a foreign trip in mid-March, as Obama summoned wavering House Democrats to the White House for a private sales pitch. (Washington Post)

Pressure mounts for/against health care bill
As President Obama pushes for a prompt up or down vote on his health initiative, lobbyists and activist groups on both sides of the issue have launched grass-roots and high-dollar advertising campaigns on the roughly two dozen members of Congress who may be the final swing votes on the controversial issue. (Los Angeles Times)

I’m a Medicare doctor. Here’s what I make
When you think of low-paying jobs, doctor doesn’t usually come to mind. But with a 21 percent cut in Medicare payments slated to take effect later this month, physicians who say they are making an OK living may be reduced to income levels that no longer make their profession viable. That’s especially true for those still paying medical school costs and other training. (CNN)

How much fraud and abuse is there in U.S. health care
The regulations surrounding the rendering of health care services to the federal government are immensely complex. They seem to be based on the idea that every provider of these services is a latent crook. Other countries manage the process by exception. They go by the assumption that the bulk of providers of care are honest and then merely go after the statistical outliers. Far less money is spent on billing in those countries. (New York Times)

Minnesota residents sue to save expiring health plan
Three Minnesota recipients of General Assistance Medical Care filed a lawsuit against Gov. Pawlenty and other state officials Thursday to keep the subsidized health care program in place, at least temporarily. (Minnesota Public Radio)

Hospitals present 3.5 percent fee to raise TennCare funds
Tennessee Hospital Association leaders briefed state officials Thursday about their plan to raise $229.5 million from a 3.5 percent fee on hospitals. Hospital officials said the money — meant to offset many of Gov. Phil Bredesen’s proposed TennCare cuts — will be raised through what they are calling an “enhanced coverage fee” and would draw an additional $429.6 million in federal matching funds. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)

Health and care
Primary medicine may be on the decline in prestige and pay, but the fancy surgical specialties can’t offer the same daily dose of satisfaction, heartbreak, and connection. Judy Paley, a primary care doctor with a two-person practice and a load of bills in Denver, has started a blog brimming with what she calls “close encounters of the life-saving kind.’’ Reading it is good for what ails you. (Boston Globe)