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

Iowa News

Create Iowa Office of Health Reform
Passing health reform was no easy task for Washington lawmakers. Implementing the thousands of pages of the new law will not be easy for states. Iowa must do more to create the infrastructure necessary to handle the complicated task. (Des Moines Register)

Single mom who struggled to pay bills helped by Council Bluffs hospital
Jennie Edmundson Hospital’s Spirit of Courage Charitable Patient Care Fund came to the rescue when Jennifer Williams was fighting breast cancer, caring for her two daughters and falling behind on her bills. (Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil)

UI gets grant for neurological study
The grant was part of nearly $1.7 million in grants given out by the Department of Health and Human Services, with Cass County Memorial Hospital in Atlantic receiving a $99,884 grant and the Pella Regional Health Center getting a $93,331 grant for small health care provider quality improvement. (Iowa City Press-Citizen)

U.S. News

Washington hall monitors’ latest Berwick jab: charitable donations
Iowa Senator Charles Grassley is demanding that Donald Berwick, the newly installed head of the federal agency that oversees Medicare, disclose information about all donors to his nonprofit medical organization. The White House says Dr. Berwick is in compliance with ethics rules. (National Public Radio)

Medicaid rescissions worse than private insurers
Private insurers whose commitments are enforced by contract law, have to raise premiums when costs rise; but when state legislative bodies say “no” to Medicaid’s need for funding, Medicaid revokes its commitments to the insured instead. (Kaiser Health News)

Consumer groups want federal investigation of insurers’ medical spending
In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Media and Democracy said that insurers reported less medical spending in recent months ahead of new federal rules that will require the companies to do just the opposite starting next year. (Los Angeles Times)

Hospitals say more insured patients can’t pay
It’s no surprise that the struggling economy has made it harder for hospitals to collect money from patients who have lost their jobs – and their health insurance. But a local hospital group says the fastest-growing part of what hospitals call “bad debt” – basically, uncollectible bills – is money owed by patients who have insurance. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Health insurance limits are rising, if regulators approve
Starting this fall, most health care policies — except existing policies bought by individuals — will have to cover at least $750,000 in medical care per person. That ratchets up to $2 million by September 2012. But there’s a catch. Insurers can seek a waiver from the government to keep their current limited plans if they can prove that offering better benefits would cause significant premium increases or force employers to drop or severely limit coverage. (USA Today)

Physician-owned hospitals prepare for bleak futures
The biggest losers in federal health care reform — the country’s physician-owned specialty hospitals — are on pins and needles. With a ban on new facilities, expansion plans quashed and doctor ownership curtailed, 70 such hospitals in Texas are plotting their next move. (Texas Tribune)

Patients’ files left at public dump
Four Massachusetts community hospitals are investigating how thousands of patient health records, some containing Social Security numbers and sensitive medical diagnoses, ended up in a pile at a public dump. (Boston Globe)

Electronic medical records: higher costs cited by study
It is a widely accepted assumption in the healthcare and information technology industries that electronic medical records in hospitals help reduce costs and enhance the quality of patient care. But new research on the subject by three W. P. Carey information systems professors contradicts that conventional IT wisdom. And that has surprised and disappointed many in the healthcare and IT fields, including the researchers themselves. (The Fiscal Times)