by admin on Friday, August 10, 2012
Featuring hospital and health care headlines from the media and the Web.
Iowa News
Spencer Hospital earns Blue Zones certification
Spencer Hospital has earned certification from the Blue Zones Project, an initiative dedicated to improving public health. The designation gives the hospital the distinction of being the first certified worksite of the four Blue Zones demonstration sites in Iowa, said Alison Simpson, community program manager of the Spencer Blue Zones Project. Blue Zone initiatives aim to help people improve their health by making small changes at home, school, work, in social settings and in local policy that make healthful choices the easiest option. (Sioux City Journal)
Supervisors discuss county mental health
At Tuesday?s weekly meeting of the Cherokee County Board of Supervisors, the Board learned more about the State of Iowa?s redesign of its Mental Health system from Community Services Director Lisa Langlitz. Basically, the State is moving from a system of local (county) mental health services to a regional system. Unfortunately, said Langlitz, the Administrative Rules for operating the system have not yet been developed and released and the amount of funding is also an unknown, so she did not have much ?hard? information to provide at this time. (Cherokee Chronicle-Times)
West Burlington hospital begins rehab clinic expansion
Beginning Monday, Great River Health Systems will begin construction on a 40,000-square-foot expansion for the Center of Rehab and Clinics. The project is estimated to cost $10 million and is scheduled to be completed by September 2013. ?The purpose of the expansion is to provide the citizens of Burlington with the highest quality of physical therapy and to provide a state-of-the-art fitness center,? said Michael AbouAssaly, medical director of the Healthy Living Clinic at Great River Medical Center. The new rehabilitation and fitness area will feature an elevated walking track, a climbing wall and an expanded exercise area. (Burlington HawkEye)
Meet Kevin Carroll, executive director of behavioral health services
Kevin Carroll is responsible for all aspects of Iowa Health?s inpatient and outpatient behavioral health programs, including 56 inpatient beds and the Powell Chemical Dependency Center at Iowa Lutheran Hospital and an outpatient psychiatry clinic in West Des Moines. Since moving back to Iowa eight years ago, he has worked as a counselor at Orchard Place and most recently worked at Broadlawns Medical Center, where he was manager of outpatient mental health and social services. (Des Moines Business Record)
National News
Health care law may cut down on excessive procedures
The 2010 health care law gives Medicare and Medicaid more authority to track and reject payments for medical procedures believed to be overused, such as those involving hospital giant HCA and its alleged overuse of stents in cardiac patients, records and interviews with health care experts show. HCA, a for-profit hospital chain with 163 hospitals, discovered that several of its cardiologists could not justify cardiac procedures they performed, according to a New York Times investigation this week. Insurers and the government then paid for those unnecessary procedures. (USA Today)
U.S. hospital companies seen under microscope as costs targeted
Investors in U.S. hospital companies can expect more scrutiny of billing practices and the medical need for expensive treatments as the federal government faces greater pressure to recoup billions in fraudulent claims, analysts said. HCA Holdings Inc., the largest for-profit hospital operator in the United States, said earlier this week that federal authorities were investigating whether heart procedures performed at some of its facilities were medically necessary. (Chicago Tribune)
Slideshow: 3 hospital ratings tools compared
The U.S. government posts data on readmissions, mortality, and other measures on its Hospital Compare site. That data may be used by others to build their own ranking systems. In June, the Leapfrog Group introduced ?Hospital Safety Score? which assigns letter grades based on safety metrics. In July, Consumer Reports? hospital safety ratings were rolled out. To see how top hospitals measured up across three ratings systems, we compare hospital safety scores from the Leapfrog Group and Consumer Reports alongside the overall rankings of U.S. News & World Report?s 17 top-rated hospitals. (HealthLeaders Media)
Medical ID theft: Double danger for doctors
When Anne Peters, MD, a Los Angeles-based internist, started receiving phone calls in 2006 from patients who were not hers about medical procedures she didn?t perform or even offer at her practice, she figured out pretty quickly that she had become a victim of medical identity theft. When Dr. Peters sought advice on how to resolve the situation, she not only came up empty-handed, but she soon started feeling like a criminal herself. She was visited by federal agents, she received notices from the Internal Revenue Service regarding back taxes on $750,000 she never earned, and she was even detained once at the airport for more than an hour when she returned from a trip abroad. (American Medical News)
Source: http://blog.iowahospital.org/2012/08/10/todays-newsstand-august-10-2012/
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