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

Iowa News

Making the case for a C.R. medical mall
Ultimately, our logic is simple. No one comes to Cedar Rapids because we have nice hospital beds. They come here for our physicians, more specifically our specialists. And in an increasingly complex world of health care delivery, particularly post-reform, Cedar Rapids health care will be driven by our ability to attract and retain the best and greatest number of these specialists. (Cedar Rapids Gazette)

UI continues planning on $73M medical clinic
The University of Iowa will ask the state Board of Regents next week for the OK to move ahead with a $73 million medical clinic in Coralville. The UI is seeking approval for the schematic design, project description and $73 million budget for an ambulatory care clinic in the Iowa River Landing district southeast of the Interstate 80-First Avenue interchange, according to documents released by the regents office Thursday. (Eastern Iowa News Now)

Make hospitals report medical problems
More than half of states require hospitals to report certain medical errors or criminal events – such as use of contaminated drugs or a patient abduction – to a state agency for further review or investigation. Iowa isn’t one of them. It should be. And the Iowa Hospital Licensing Board should vote to support such a requirement at its next meeting in November. (Des Moines Register)

U.S. News

Missouri ballot measures tests federal health care law
Missouri on Tuesday will become the first state to the test the popularity of President Barack Obama’s top policy accomplishment with a statewide ballot proposal attempting to reject its core mandate that most Americans have health insurance. The Missouri Hospital Association is mailing letters to hundreds of thousands of homes suggesting that hospitals could incur costs of about $50 million annually in treating the uninsured if the state proposal is passed and upheld in court. (Associated Press)

Missouri’s Proposition C will only encourage freeloading
The Missouri Hospital Association is nothing if not persistent. It keeps pushing this crazy idea that people should have health insurance. The hospital association is financing opposition to Proposition C. That’s the measure on Tuesday’s statewide ballot that seeks to tell the federal government that it can’t require Missourians to purchase health insurance if they don’t want to. (Kansas City Star)

Hospitals’ cost cutting pays off despite fewer patients
Over the past year and a half, keeping costs in check has helped the large hospital chains based in the Nashville area to increase quarterly earnings, even when seeing fewer patients come through their doors. The recent second quarter was no different. Cost controls fueled an 18 percent increase in net income at Franklin-based Community Health Systems, despite a decline in the number of patients. (Nashville Tennessean)

Twin Cities nurses: Union harassing us
Three Twin Cities nurses who crossed their union’s picket line say they resigned from the union before the 24-hour walkout in order to work behind the picket lines. Nonetheless, they received letters from the Minnesota Nurses Association saying they may be subject to reprimand, censure or expulsion. (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

DC nurses to vote on work stoppage
More than 1,600 registered nurses at the 900-bed Washington Hospital Center, the largest non-profit hospital in the Washington, DC, area, will vote over the weekend on whether to go on strike. At issue is the hospital’s decision last winter to fire 18 nurses and discipline several more following severe snow storms in the region. (HealthLeaders Media)

Hospital social media and fundraising are a two-way street
As non-profit hospitals, we’ve had some fundraising events that we were promoting through these avenues. Of course it was slow going for a while, but a recent event for Hasbro Children’s Hospital taught us a lesson: not only can you gain more awareness of an event through social media, but in return you are more actively engaged with the community and you gain more fans/followers with whom you can engage. That’s a nice outcome that we didn’t see coming! (Hospital Impact)

Democrats under fire over health law reporting mandate
Congressional Democrats may water down or repeal new tax-reporting rules that are supposed to raise $16 billion for health-care legislation, facing a chorus of criticism about the rules. House Democrats were forced to postpone a vote late Thursday on a GOP motion calling for repeal of the reporting requirement. That, in turn, delayed action on an $11 billion bill that expands federally-subsidized bonds for infrastructure projects. (Wall Street Journal)

Aging hospital seen as a bargaining chip
California Pacific Medical Center, which operates St. Luke’s hospital in San Francisco, once planned to shutter the 139-year-old hospital and turn it into an outpatient facility. But California Pacific — a not-for-profit affiliate of Sutter Health, a Northern California hospital network — is keeping St. Luke’s open, using it as a bargaining chip in an ambitious strategy to overhaul how it offers medical care in San Francisco. (New York Times)