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

Iowa News

Michelle Obama praises Iowa health initiative at first stop of Let’s Move! Tour
Michelle Obama touted vegetables, encouraged exercise and led thousands of Iowa children in a rousing version of the Interlude dance this morning in Des Moines. The first lady appeared at Wells Fargo Arena to kick off a three-day national tour promoting her “Let’s Move” campaign to combat childhood obesity. “I am so proud of what you all are doing to make this the healthiest state by 2016,” she said. “…We want every single state in this country to do exactly what this state is doing. You are the model.” (Des Moines Register)

Henry County Health Center creates positive impact on local economy
Henry County Health Center generates 344 jobs that add $18,396,006 to Henry County’s economy, according to the latest study by the Iowa Hospital Association. In addition, HCHC Associates by themselves spend $4,536,813 on retail sales and contribute $272,209 in state sales tax revenue. “Henry County’s economy is impacted significantly by the health sector. Henry County Health Center contributes to the local economy in two ways: HCHC employs a large number of area residents, and the health center purchases goods and services through local businesses. In addition, our associates buy locally which also benefits our economy,” commented HCHC CEO Robb Gardner. (KILJ)

Iowa minorities struggle with organ transplant matches
More than 640 Iowans every day wait for an organ transplant that could save their lives. But minorities in the state wait longer than most. Because of a lack of minority donations and registered donors, minorities in need of transplants are having a difficult time finding matches. Only 4 percent of minorities in Iowa are organ donors. We need more — we need more people of diverse ethnic backgrounds to register — people’s lives depend on it,” said Colleen Chapleau, the assistant director of the UI Blood and Marrow Transplantation Program. In 2011, minorities made up only around 6 percent of the living donors in Iowa. No African Americans or Asians were living donors. (University of Iowa Daily Iowan)

Mercy gives Nebraska man new lease on life
Randy Rubendall was experiencing a dull ache around his heart, but it was unlike any pain he felt with his other cardiac events. He decided to drive himself to Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City.  ”The ER staff was waiting for me when I arrived at their door. A Mercy cardiologist examined me and ran some tests and decided I needed a catheterization, a procedure in which a long, narrow tube, called a catheter, is inserted into a blood vessel in your arm or leg and guided to your heart with the aid of a special X-ray machine to take pictures. I was happy because I thought the doctor would put a stent in and six hours later I’d be on my way back home to Wayne. But that possibility went away when I was told that I needed double bypass surgery,” he said. (Sioux City Journal)

National News

Keeping readmission rates low with treatment guidelines
UPMC Hamot, Lancaster (PA) General Hospital, and Muncie, IN–based Indiana University Health Ball Memorial Hospital have readmission rates that beat Medicare’s HospitalCompare dataset national average in three key areas: 30-day readmission rates for heart attacks, 30-day readmission rates for heart failure, and 30-day readmission rates for pneumonia. There is a common thread tied to each organization’s success: detailed treatment guidelines. (HealthLeaders Media)

Panel: Hospitals should consider mandatory flu shots
If hospitals and clinics can’t get 90 percent of their employees to get an annual flu shot, they should “strongly consider” making the vaccine mandatory, a federal vaccines panel voted Wednesday. The National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC) voted 12-2, with one panelist abstaining, that if hospitals and healthcare facilities implement a number of NVAC-endorsed recommendations — including staff training and trying to create a culture where flu shots are the norm — and still fail to get 90 percent of workers vaccinated, they should consider a mandate. (MedPage Today)

Getting serious about ICD-10: Lessons from the field
One of our panelists, Stephen Stewart, CIO of Henry County Health Center in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, was way ahead of me–and a lot of other folks–in 2010: “I remember sitting in a presentation about ICD-10 at the 2010 CHIME Fall Forum,” he wrote in a recent post for Hospitals & Health Networks. “It was a sunrise session, 7 a.m. as I recall, and as I sat there, terror began to seep into my consciousness. This was much bigger than I had ever dreamt and we had done little to prepare.” (Fierce Healthcare)

In small California hospitals, the marketing of back surgery
Tri-City Regional Medical Center built up this business rapidly. For an operation known as spinal fusion, which joins two or more vertebrae, the small hospital billed workers’ compensation insurers $65 million in 2010, up from less than $3 million three years earlier, state hospital discharge data show. Helping spur the business was Paul Richard Randall, a consultant and convicted felon to whom Tri-City has paid millions of dollars in marketing fees. According to people familiar with his role, it was twofold: bringing surgery cases to the hospital by recruiting surgeons to operate there, and supplying metal implants for the surgeries through distributorships he owned. (Wall Street Journal)

NH hospital officials blast for-profit cancer center bill
Representatives of the state’s major hospitals fought a proposal that could pave the way for a for-profit cancer facility to come to the state at a hearing Tuesday that was notable for the absence of the company that was the impetus for the legislation: Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA). The bill, HB 1642, would create a special “destination cancer hospital” classification, which would be exempt from the state’s Certification of Need review process for new hospitals, as well as the Medicaid Enhancement Tax on the grounds that it wouldn’t accept Medicaid patients. CTCA is eyeing southern New Hampshire for its first facility in New England. The company operates centers in Illinois, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. (New Hampshire Union Leader)