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

Iowa News

Supervisors hear update on the status of Iowa’s mental health system
Allamakee County Board of Supervisors met with CPC Jan Heikes, who presented the recommendations of the Legislative Interim Committee regarding a redesign of Iowa’s mental health system. Heikes explained that the Committee recommends changing the current county-based system to a region-based system, with regions comprised of no fewer than three counties and a population range of 200,000 to 700,000 people. “Something is going to change,” Heikes said. “If we don’t get on the regional bandwagon, they’re going to move towards a state system.” (Waukon Standard)

Work continues on Hancock County Memorial Hospital addition
Construction is progressing as the skyline continues to change at the Hancock County Memorial Hospital. Construction on an $11 million addition, which began in March, is running on schedule, HCMH administrator Vance Jackson said. The addition will feature 17 large private patient rooms, an improved therapy and rehabilitation area and a complete renovation of the existing nursing floor. (Mason City Globe Gazette)

National News

Few Americans think health is improving in the U.S.
Public skepticism about health isn’t confined to doubts about last year’s health care law:  Most Americans also think the overall health of the public isn’t improving, according to a new poll commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The poll found that 45 percent of people thought the health of Americans had become worse during the past five years, and 40 percent thought it had stayed about the same. Only 13 percent thought it was better. (Kaiser Health News)

Venture capitalists, trying to curb health care costs
Over the past two decades, venture capitalists helped make possible striking advances in health care, including robotic surgery, cancer vaccines and genomics. But such innovations also fuel higher health-care spending, and now private investors see new opportunities in betting on companies that could curb those costs. (Washington Post)

States worried they’ll bear the brunt of anger over health law’s shortcomings
State officials are pushing back hard against what they view as shortcomings in the healthcare reform law for fear they’ll be barraged with complaints when people have trouble affording insurance. Federal regulators are writing the rules governing key aspects of the law, including the guidelines to determine who’s eligible for subsidies to buy private insurance. Those benefits will be delivered through state-based exchanges, however, leaving state officials on the receiving end of angry phone calls if glitches in the law aren’t ironed out by 2014. (The Hill)

Increasing Medicare age could lead to higher costs
“This proposal will save money for the federal government and save money for Medicare,” Researcher Tricia Neuman says. And the downside? “It would do so by shifting costs to other payers.” Specifically, some costs would shift to employers because they’d have to continue to cover many of those people who’d continue to work. Some costs would also shift to those 65- and 66-year-olds themselves, if they’re no longer working. They’d have to pay for their own insurance. And states might have to pay more, too. If those people have low incomes, they might end up on Medicaid, rather than Medicare. (National Public Radio)

Storm has Vermont scrambling to find beds for mentally ill
While other states have shuttered psychiatric hospitals and sharply reduced the number of beds in an effort over the decades to place mentally ill patients in less restrictive environments, virtually all have kept at least one open, according to the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors Research Institute. And none have had such an abrupt closure as Vermont’s hospital, which has forced the state to create alternatives at breakneck speed instead of the years it usually takes. The short-term result is patients requiring intensive psychiatric care scattered at facilities not equipped to handle the newcomers.