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

Iowa News

First Muscatine General Hospital administrator remembered
J.W. Myers was named administrator of Muscatine General Hospital on Aug. 2, 1953, and served in that capacity until 1979, when for health reasons he assumed the duties of chief executive advisory officer until his retirement in 1982. In 1970, Myers hired Al Zastrow, now CEO of Keokuk Health Systems. “He was my mentor both professionally and personally for many years,” Zastrow said. (Muscatine Journal)

Nurses are health ‘point guards’
As point guards for the integration of care, nurses will need to assume widespread leadership roles within hospital organizations. Hospitals need to reward nurses both monetarily and through recognition of their expertise. The next time you or a loved one need to be hospitalized, pay attention to the nursing care you receive. Your health depends on it. (Des Moines Business Record)

U.S. News

Nearly half of health care workers in California hospitals did not receive flu shots
The vaccination rate was less than 25 percent in 3.3 percent of the hospitals, according to data compiled by the state health department and obtained by Consumers Union through a Public Records Act request. Moreover, 31 percent of hospitals in the state did not report their vaccination rate to the health department despite a law requiring it. (Los Angeles Times)

Health law myths: outside the realm of reality
With a law as long and as complex as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, it’s natural people are still a little confused about what it does and doesn’t do. But some things being said or circulated on the Internet about the health law are well outside the realm of reality. It turns out, though, that many of these more outlandish claims have at least some basis in truth. (National Public Radio)

Surer footing for Medicare
We need to find our way to an improved and better-integrated system of care — one that is better for patients, better for those who care for patients, better for the many employers who pay for coverage and better for us as a nation. The Affordable Care Act sets the stage for what we need: better care, better health and lower costs. (Washington Post)

U.S. medical programs missing millions of kids
An estimated five million uninsured children in the United States were eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program but were not enrolled in either plan, according to a new report. The study recommended policy reforms and broader efforts to get uninsured children into government medical programs, including the use of income tax data for automatic enrollment. (Reuters)

Employers push costs for health on workers
The shift is occurring, policy analysts and others say, as employers feel more pressure from the weak economy and the threat of even more expensive coverage under the new health care law. In contrast to past practices of absorbing higher prices, some companies chose this year to keep their costs the same by passing the entire increase in premiums for family coverage onto their workers, according to a new survey. (New York Times)

Public hospitals look to overhaul affiliations with medical schools
New York City’s public hospital system is embarking on a long-term attempt to gain more control over running its 11 hospitals by renegotiating longstanding affiliation contracts with some of the city’s most powerful medical schools. For decades, many of the city’s public hospitals have had contracts with medical schools allowing the schools to hire and fire doctors. (New York Times)