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

Iowa News

Mercy, St. Luke’s spend $25 million on community benefits
The two major hospitals in Sioux City provided a combined $25 million in community benefits. According to a statement issued Wednesday by St. Luke’s Regional Medical Center, it and Mercy Medical — Sioux City spent the money on charity care, subsidized health services or other community benefits in 2009. The totals also include losses incurred while treating Medicaid patients. (Sioux City Journal)

Clarke County Hospital staff puts life-saving skills to the test
As a Clarke County Hospital Auxiliary volunteer, Ron Riekena has spent scores of hours assisting people in getting to their appointments throughout Clarke County Hospital. He talks about the excellent care and great service they receive at CCH. His kind words aren’t scripted; they come from the heart – something he learned firsthand. (Osceola Sentinel-Tribune)

UIHC learns to be Lean
The theory behind the Lean method is simple: Eliminate unnecessary steps and wasted energy, and efficiency will increase. “It turns out that when you improve the efficiency, it improves the patients’ satisfaction and the quality of care,” physician Andrew Nugent explained. (University of Iowa Daily Iowan)

Finley Hospital cranks down water usage
The Finley Hospital used 16 million fewer gallons of water in 2009 than in 2004. That’s enough to fill Flora Pool 37 times. The hospital also enjoys natural gas and electricity savings. “We really improved our purchasing practices,” said Neil Erdmann, director of facilities. “Our new units have water-saving faucets and low-flow toilets. We eliminated areas where we had leaking equipment and tightened up our whole system.” (Dubuque Telegraph Herald)

Skiff ends fiscal year with $4 million loss
Skiff Medical Center Trustees were being informed at today’s late morning meeting that the hospital lost more than $4 million in the fiscal year ended June 30, about a $700,000 increase from the loss recorded the fiscal year before. The statement of operations report provided to Trustees showed the city-owned hospital ending the fiscal year with revenue over expenses totaling a negative $4,012,642 compared to $3,365,368 loss at the end of fiscal year 2009. (Newton Independent)

U.S. News

Poll shows opposition to health care overhaul declining
Opposition to the landmark health care overhaul declined over the past month, to 35 percent from 41 percent, according to the latest results of a tracking poll, reported Thursday.  Fifty percent of the public held a favorable view of the law, up slightly from 48 percent a month ago, while 14 percent expressed no opinion about the measure, according to the poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Washington Post)

The hospital, your care coordinator
Hospitals aren’t known for making house calls. Once patients get their discharge papers, they take their chances with a family doctor or staffers at a clinic who may or may not know what happened inside the hospital’s walls. So Margaret Bennett’s experience is pretty rare. (U.S. News & World Report)

For budget chief, not all farewells are fond
Peter Orszag was the administration’s main proponent of “bending the curve” on health care expenditures. Frustrated that House Democrats wouldn’t accept some painful cost-cutting measures in the new health care law, Mr. Orszag pushed for and won a controversial provision to create something called the Independent Payment Advisory Board. This is an outside commission of 15 appointees who will, beginning in 2014, identify cuts to Medicare if the plan exceeds a preset rate for growth. Congress then has to either approve the cuts or propose an alternative. (New York Times)

Americans cut back on doctor visits
The drop in usage is showing up as health care companies report financial results. Insurers, lab-testing companies, hospitals and doctor-billing concerns say that patient visits, drug prescriptions and procedures were down in the second quarter from year-ago levels. (Wall Street Journal)

Dr. Atul Gawande: Make end of life more humane
Dr. Atul Gawande began researching hospice and end-of-life care options because he says he didn’t know how to broach the subject of death with his terminally ill patients. The surgeon and New Yorker staff writer writes about the difficulties faced by medical professionals who must decide when to stop medical interventions and focus on improving the final days of life in his article “Letting Go” in the August 2 New Yorker. (National Public Radio)

Patients, hospitals wrestle over tumor tissue
So who really owns this stuff and has the right to make decisions about it? You might think the obvious answer is the patient. But that’s actually not clear. C. Mitchell Goldman, a health-care lawyer at Duane Morris L.L.P., expects more lawsuits as more uses for tissue emerge. “There’s not a body of settled law around this issue,” he said. It’s “fertile for litigation once it becomes clear that having control of this tissue for future use will become important.” (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Wireless sensor watches blood sugar for diabetics
Researchers have developed an implantable sensor that measures blood sugar continuously and transmits the information without wires — a milestone, they said, in diabetes treatment. The device worked in one pig for more than a year and in another for nearly 10 months with no trouble, they reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine. (Reuters)