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

Iowa News

Zaun calls health law a ‘disaster,’ lays out fix
The Republican candidate for Iowa’s 3^rd Congressional District said he favors a health care plan that includes health savings accounts that give patients direct control over decisions and spending on their health care. He favors incentives for people who have healthful lifestyles, transparency in pricing, tort reform and prohibitions on insurers dropping sick patients who failed to report prior, unrelated health problems on insurance applications. (Des Moines Register)

2010 Best of Des Moines Business Leadership
In its new Best of Des Moines issue, the Des Moines Business Record tabs Mercy Medical Center CEO David Vellinga and Iowa Health-Des Moines Assistant Vice President Tom Mulrooney as outstanding business leaders in the metro area. (Des Moines Business Record)

Pella Regional to offer new service online
A tool that the hospital is currently putting in place is known as a patient portal, which will be a web-accessible program called “My Pella Health.” The program will allow patients access to their physician and medical information anywhere they’re at, 24 hours a day. (KNIA/KRLS)

Local teens find career path with hospital volunteer program
Sometimes the jobs that pay the least are the ones that help a young person the most in his or her decisions for the future. This is the case for some teenagers in the Fort Madison Community Hospital Junior Volunteer Program. Zach Cross and Stephanie Frenz are two of the 20 volunteer high school students in the program this summer. (Fort Madison Daily Democrat)

Another overnight deluge causes more flash flooding
Storms pounded Iowa again overnight, causing more flash flooding and more water rescues. Paul DeGeest, Mahaska County Sheriff, said, “We had a tremendous amount of rain in a very short period of time. A creek normally 4 foot wide became a raging river. It washed a 12-by-18-foot building onto the highway, took people’s hot tubs, LP tanks. We had three families stranded.” (Des Moines Register)

U.S. News

Health law expands Medicare coverage of preventive care
Preventive health care is important at any age, but never more so than as we get older. Many of the major cancers that can be screened for – such as breast and colorectal cancer – are typically diagnosed at about age 70. After age 55, people have a 90 percent chance of developing high blood pressure, putting them at higher risk for heart disease and stroke. “The payoff in terms of prevention in geriatrics is more upfront and more immediate,” says geriatrician Peter Hollmann, chairman of the public policy committee for the American Geriatrics Society. (Kaiser Health News)

Pay practices in health care are investigated
The Obama administration is investigating pay practices throughout the health care industry after finding that many hospitals and nursing homes do not pay proper overtime to nurses and other employees who work more than 40 hours a week. Hospitals around the country have paid millions of dollars in back wages to settle claims by the government and their employees. (New York Times)

As older people grow in numbers, experts seek ways to handle the coming boom
The tsunami looms: By 2050, nearly 90 million Americans will have passed age 65, and every corner of society will feel the impact. With our inadequate health-care workforce, outmoded retirement ideas and rigid housing policies, how can our country prepare? Beyond rethinking ways to ensure retirement savings (mandatory government savings plans?) and redefining retirement (phased retirements? working longer?), researchers and professionals are trying out, and in some cases reviving, some ideas. (Washington Post)

Who visits the ER? 20 percent of Americans, insured or not
Among the uninsured, 7.4 percent made two or more visits to an E.R., but so did 5.1 percent of people with private insurance. Medicaid recipients were the heaviest users of E.R.’s, with 15.3 percent of them making two or more visits during the year. (New York Times)

H1N1 pandemic officially over, says WHO; cites lessons learned
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said public-health authorities were aided by “pure good luck” in that H1N1 didn’t mutate to a more lethal form or develop resistance to antiviral treatments and that the vaccine developed for use against it was effective. And she said WHO was correct in its response to the pandemic, which some criticized as overly alarmist. But she did add that in the future there would be a more a “more flexible” approach to pandemic preparedness guidelines. (Wall Street Journal)

Firms help workers provide end-of-life care
Recently, at the global headquarters of Pitney Bowes, a dozen people watch a film while eating lunch in a dimly lit corporate training room. It’s a caregivers support group at the Connecticut-based mailing giant. The movie ends, and conversation ensues. Employee Sondra Durant brings up her experience with her dad. (National Public Radio)