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

Iowa News:

Iowa practices get recruiting help from state medical society
The Iowa Medical Society Center for Physician Recruitment promotes Iowa as a great place to live and work. The state ranks 41st in physician supply. (amednews.com)

Manning Hospital will connect with hospitals around the state
Manning Regional Health Center will be connecting with 82 hospitals in 84 locations around the state of Iowa through the Iowa Rural Healthcare Telecommunications Program. (1380 KCIM)

Medicare rule change will benefit rural Iowa hospitals
Mid-sized Iowa hospitals will see a greater Medicare reimbursement this October as a result of a two-year fix that was included in the new health reform law – the Affordable Care Act, Iowa congressmen said Friday afternoon. (Eastern Iowa News Now)

U.S. News:

CMS Slashes Hospital Payments Under New Rule
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released its final payment rule for inpatient hospitals, and, as expected, it will cut millions in payments to hospitals for 2011. (medpagetoday.com)

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 and World Report)

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 Tennessean)

Implementing U.S. Health Care Reform
On March 23, President Barack Obama signed into law a sweeping reform of the U.S. health care system. The law, as signed, imposes a host of new requirements on private insurance companies. It expands existing government insurance programs, creates new institutions to oversee insurance markets, offers new subsidies to the uninsured, and requires citizens to have coverage – all in order to expand access to health care to 32 million uninsured U.S. citizens and legal residents. (America’s Quarterly)