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

Iowa News

Cedar Rapids looks to emulate medical district in Grand Rapids
In the past decade, Grand Rapids, Michigan has forged a name for itself in the health care industry. The city has seen more than $1 billion invested in its Medical Mile, a square-mile stretch in downtown Grand Rapids, jump-started by a privately funded research institute that opened in 2000. Cedar Rapids is looking to duplicate a piece of that runaway success in Grand Rapids, and other cities with similar corridors, with its own medical district. (Cedar Rapids Gazette)

Trinity is a real asset
Some things are so important a part of our immediate environment that it is easy to take them for granted. The excellence of Trinity Regional Medical Center is a good example. (Fort Dodge Messenger)

Police: Man stole identity to get hospital treatment
A Muscatine man has been charged with first-degree theft and identity theft, after police say he used another man’s identity to obtain more than $207,000 in medical services from University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics from 2003 to 2010. (Eastern Iowa News)

Mercy: National study touts Catholic health systems
A newly released national research firm has concluded that Catholic and other church-owned health systems are providing the best and most efficient care among hospitals in the United States, according to a release from Mercy Medical Center – Sioux City. (Sioux City Journal)

Use health dollars to help patients
It’s downright painful to see health insurance companies rolling in the dough while millions of Americans pay huge health bills or have no coverage. Washington lawmakers tried to do something about it. In the new reform law, they required insurers to spend at least 80 to 85 percent of premiums collected on actual health care. (Des Moines Register)

State says residential care facility’s license claim is false
An Iowa care facility run by one of the nation’s largest senior living companies could face criminal charges for falsely claiming to be a state-licensed assisted living center. Emeritus at Silver Pines is a Cedar Rapids home licensed as a residential care facility that can provide personal assistance and supervision, but no nursing care. (Des Moines Register)

U.S. News

Are bigger health-care networks better or just creating a monopoly?
Carilion Clinic says it represents an ideal envisioned by the nation’s new health-care law: a network that increases efficiency by bringing more doctors and hospitals onto one team, integrating care from the doctor’s office to the operating room. The name for such networks, which the new law strongly promotes with pilot programs, is accountable care organizations, or ACOs — providers joining together to be “accountable” for the total care of patients, with incentives from insurers to keep people healthy and costs down. (Washington Post)

Future of children’s healthcare program already under debate
Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) this week also warned of the potential dangers of eliminating CHIP. “Children are not little adults,” Casey said Friday in an e-mail. “They have their own unique health and healthcare needs. We bring children to see pediatricians because they are doctors that have the knowledge and expertise to treat children specifically; likewise, CHIP is a program built specifically for children.” (The Hill)

Medicare trustees’ upbeat outlook relies on big pay cuts for doctors
The Obama administration promoted the 2010 Medicare trustees report as evidence the health system reform law is helping shore up the program’s finances. Critics said that outlook is based on unrealistic assumptions and misleading accounting. (American Medical News)

Innovative health programs counter primary care shortage
Even before Congress in March passed the landmark law designed to make health care more affordable and expand coverage, an aging population and doctors’ increasing preference for higher-paying specialties set the stage for a primary care shortage. And what many believe to be an outdated reimbursement system — one that drives doctors to schedule office visits when a quick phone call or e-mail might do — doesn’t help. (USA Today)

Computers driving the hospital of the future
The hospital of the future is coming to Michigan. All over the state, hospitals and doctor networks are investing millions in technology, a push also being made by the federal government. (Detroit Free Press)

Health board backs limits on disclosure of infections
The divide over whether the public should know the specific hospitals where patients are contracting lethal “superbugs” was clear at last week’s meeting of the Nevada Board of Health. (Las Vegas Sun)

Japan, checking on its oldest, finds many gone
Japan has long boasted of having many of the world’s oldest people. That was before the police found the body of a man thought to be one of Japan’s oldest, at 111 years, mummified in his bed, dead for more than three decades. His daughter, now 81, hid his death to continue collecting his monthly pension payments, the police said. (New York Times)