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

Iowa News

Hospitals’ safety campaign aims at messaging-while-driving risk
Iowa Health-Des Moines hopes “Just Drive” stickers will help employees and others break a bad habit. The hospital system is asking employees and the public to pledge one of three choices: Not texting or e-mailing while driving, which is against the law in Iowa as of July 1; not texting or e-mailing and using a hands-free device while driving; not using a phone at all while driving. (Des Moines Register)

U.S. News

Obama sends Senate Berwick nomination for Medicare
President Barack Obama still wants the U.S. Senate to confirm Donald Berwick as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Obama resubmitted Berwick’s nomination to the Senate today. He put Berwick in the job July 7 using a recess appointment, a procedure that lets the president fill positions without Senate confirmation when Congress isn’t in session. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)

How do hospital CEOs feel about the health care economy?
We’re a little more than halfway through the year, and we’re at the end of the fiscal year, and the economy fiddles while the Gulf leaks oil. But it’s a good time to take stock. In that theme, what should land on my desk (really, my email account) on Wednesday morning, but a survey from the Conference Board, which says the majority of CEOs expect to increase their companies’ profits in the next year. (HealthLeaders News)

‘Mystery patients’ help uncover medical errors
Actors playing patients each presented a well-rehearsed case and made an audiotape of their interactions with physicians. In one case, the patient presented as a middle-age man complaining of uncontrolled asthma. In another, a woman came in for a blood-pressure check before surgery. In a third, a diabetic man reported almost fainting twice after taking a higher dose of insulin. A fourth involved a patient similar to the older man described above. (Chicago Tribune)

Facepalming our way into the future
The rapidly ramifying crisis in health care may (we can pray) end all delusions. It may at least begin to weaken them by exposing them to the light, to the sobering effects of reality.  It can seem at times like a kind of existential madness. But in fact we are engaged in a struggle over the very meaning and substance of who we are, what we do and why we do it. We can hope that at last and increasingly, we will be shedding our delusions and engaging in that struggle on the basis of some kind of reality. (Hospitals & Health Systems)

State rules clash with health pools
In the early implementation of health reform, states with the most progressive health policies are having a more difficult experience than others locking down a share of the $5 billion of federal funding for new high-risk pools. (Politico)

Doctors slam insurers over their rankings
Doctor groups criticized growing efforts by health plans to steer patients toward certain physicians based on cost or quality, arguing in a letter to insurers that the rankings may be unreliable and unfair. The letter is the latest shot by doctors at such grading efforts, which have led to years of tensions between physicians and health plans. (Wall Street Journal)

Insurers tout disease management programs, but critics are wary
Starting next year, most health insurance plans will be required to spend 80 to 85 percent of the premiums they collect on medical claims or other activities that improve members’ health. Consumer advocates argue that only programs whose effectiveness has been scientifically proven should be included. But insurers warn that if the rules are so strict that most of their disease management programs don’t qualify, they will be forced to curtail or even drop them. (Washington Post)

Hospital experts debate wisdom of using stun guns to control violent patients
There are 151 hospitals in the United States that use or are testing Taser brand electronic control devices, according to a company spokesperson. Each hospital develops its own stun-gun guidelines, but a company spokesperson said, “Hospital security officers on scene are best able . . . to determine the proper response.” (Washington Post)

The pros and cons of opening doctors’ notes to patients
Patients typically have no idea what their doctor jots down about them after an office visit, and rarely read those notes, even though they have the legal right to do so.  Now, an ambitious project called OpenNotes aims to change that, by giving patients access to the notes recorded after every medical encounter. (Wall Street Journal)

Hospital files with data of 800,000 are missing
Computer files from South Shore Hospital that contain personal information for about 800,000 people may have been lost when they were shipped to a contractor to be destroyed, hospital officials announced yesterday. (Boston Globe)