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

Iowa News

Grassley: Finance hearing needed to legitimize Berwick
In a letter to the head of the Senate Finance Committee delivered Wednesday, Senator Chuck Grassley and the other Finance Republicans argued that Berwick’s testimony before the committee would ensure that the controversial appointment “does not result in circumventing the open public review that should take place for a nomination of such importance.” (The Hill)

Gov. Culver Tours Genesis Health System in Davenport
“I am committed to making Iowa the most connected state in the nation,” Governor Chet Culver said. “Health care is also at the top of my agenda. Genesis is an example of how both can go hand-in-hand by using e-health technology to enhance health care.” During a public forum with employees, Culver outlined his accomplishments in which access to affordable health care was expanded to 57,000 Iowa children. (Iowa Politics)

Better technology will deliver better health care to Iowans
In less than two years, a high-speed, safe and secure wireless and fiber optic health care network will have the capability of serving almost 2 million Iowans, 650,000 households and 134,000 businesses in the state. It will open the way to offer tele-health to even the most remote rural areas of the state, into residents’ homes and through doctors’ offices and clinics. It will make possible the transmission of X-rays and CT-scans to virtually any hospital or medical center in Iowa. (Des Moines Register)

U.S. News ranks UIHC among best hospitals
Several University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics specialties were ranked in U.S. News & World Report’s annual America’s Best Hospitals rankings. The magazine ranks hospitals in 16 different specialties, with UIHC showing up in 10 of them. Only 152 of the almost 5,000 hospitals rated by the magazine were ranked in at least one of the specialties. (Iowa City Press-Citizen)

UI to host health care symposium
The University of Iowa will host a symposium on health care reform from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Coralville Marriott Hotel and Conference Center. The event reviews and discusses how the recently enacted federal health reforms may affect health policy in Iowa. (Iowa City Press-Citizen)

U.S. News

What hospital certifications say – and don’t say
Certifications can be valuable tools for consumers because they encourage participating hospitals to find (and presumably fix) systemic problems. Moreover, those taking the trouble to get these stamps of approval (aside from considerable time, applying can run from several thousand dollars to as much as $50,000) likely specialize in treating the specific disease. And the fact that outside experts peer over the hospital wall means patients can assume at least minimal standards of care. (U.S. News & World Report)

The appointment of a new health-care tsar angers Republicans
Conservatives accuse Dr. Berwick of being anti-market and suggest that he will run the new health-care system with a bureaucrat’s self-regard and heavy hand. But the doctor’s career has been built on spreading private-sector practices into the American hospital industry, which is dominated by not-for-profit institutions. Drawing on successful practices developed by other industries, he has helped many hospitals reduce their errors and improve their performance. (The Economist)

Health plans must provide some tests at no cost
The White House on Wednesday issued new rules requiring health insurance companies to provide free coverage for dozens of screenings, laboratory tests and other types of preventive care. The new requirements promise significant benefits for consumers — if they take advantage of the services that should now be more readily available and affordable. (New York Times)

Health lobbyists focus on a once-obscure group
For years, an obscure federal task force sifted through medical literature on colonoscopies, prostate-cancer screening and fluoride treatments, ferreting out the best evidence for doctors to use in caring for their patients. But now its recommendations have financial implications, raising the stakes for patients, doctors and others in the health-care industry. (Washington Post)

FCC to propose $400 million rural health care broadband fund
The Federal Communications Commission will announce at its open meeting Thursday a plan to create a $400 million program that would bring broadband connections to rural healthcare providers. The effort, supported by money drawn from a $8 billion annual phone subsidy known as the Universal Service Fund, has been a pilot project at the FCC since 2007. But it has attracted little interest, mainly because of restrictions on who can apply for the funds and what the money can be used for, according to the FCC. (Washington Post)

Verizon creates medical information exchange cloud
Verizon announced on Wednesday a new cloud-based service offering for healthcare providers that will handle the sharing of patient information electronically between disparate platforms. The new service, called the Verizon Health Information Exchange, consolidates clinical patient data from various providers and translates it into a standardized format that can then be accessed via a secure Web portal. (ComputerWorld)

Jobs in health care are faring well
Despite the economic downturn, the health care industry is still thriving and is expected to be one of the fastest growing career fields in the coming years, according to a new book by career experts Wendy Enelow and Louise Kursmark called “Expert Resumes for Health Care Careers, Second Edition.” (Washington Post)