Doctors completed the region's first double-hand transplant Wednesday, replacing a man's burned, non-functional hands with two new ones. “It looks very good at this point,” Dr. Joseph E. Kutz, a hand surgeon with Kleinert Kutz and Associates said at a press conference, about half an hour after surgery ended. The experimental surgery at Jewish Hospital Hand Care Center — the nation's third double-hand transplant after two in Pittsburgh — took about 17.5 hours. The team from Kleinert Kutz and the University of Louisville included six doctors and 14 fellows, and the team took the unusual step of providing real-time updates by Twitter throughout the surgery. Dr. Warren Breidenbach of Kleinert Kutz, the lead hand surgeon, said he hopes the patient ultimately recovers 80 percent to 90 percent of function in his hands, returns to all his activities and winds up with “a reasonably good grip strength.” “The real issue is the next 24-48 hours, which is critical,” Breidenbach said.
Children's Hospital says it plans to eliminate 200 to 250 jobs by mid-November, citing a drop in patients, an increase in expenses and a troubled financial outlook. COO David Overman announced the cuts this week in a letter to employees. Overman wrote that the hospital, which includes campuses in St. Paul and Minneapolis, is experiencing a number of financial stresses this summer, including lower reimbursement from health plans and government programs. "For the first time in many years, Children's reported a negative operating margin through July, and it's projected that we will also report a negative operating margin for calendar year 2010," Overman wrote in a letter obtained by the Pioneer Press. Children's hopes to minimize layoffs by seeking early retirements and not filling open positions. In 2009, the hospital had the equivalent of 3,154 full-time employees. The news comes as a number of Minnesota hospitals are reporting declines in the number of patients they are treating. In the first quarter of this year, hospitals in the state saw a 4.4 percent decline in admissions.
More than $1.3 billion in new hospital projects may give a boost to Metro Detroit's languishing economy, but could also saddle residents with higher medical costs, according to an industry report funded by the United Auto Workers and Detroit's Big Three automakers. Workers and employers may end up paying for these projects with higher health insurance premiums, according to the report, released today by the National Institute for Health Care Reform, a Michigan nonprofit created by the UAW and the automakers. Among the projects cited is the proposed $850 million upgrade to the Detroit Medical Center's hospitals -- spending that hinges on the DMC's sale to for-profit Vanguard Health Systems -- and Henry Ford Health's planned $500 million investment to develop land south of its Detroit hospital.
Nine large North Texas employers have formed a partnership to help each other get a grip on rising health care costs. The employers are Archon Group, Brinker International , the cities of McKinneyand Mesquite, Energy Future Holdings , the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Haggar Clothing, Interstate Batteries and Triumph Aero- structures. The group is announcing today a three-year effort called the Texas Health Strategy Project to help the partners create better health benefit packages for their workforces. They'll do this by collecting more detailed employee health data, reorganizing how they manage benefits and purchasing only the most needed health options to keep workers healthy and out of doctor offices. Their work also is intended to address the requirements of the health care overhaul law, which requires employers to cover preventive services, said Andrew Webber, president and chief executive of the National Business Coalition on Health.
After months of being pummeled by Republican attacks on the new healthcare law, the Obama administration and its allies are striking back in an attempt to stem public disaffection with the health overhaul ahead of the November election. A nationwide, multimillion-dollar ad offensive — organized in consultation with the White House and funded by sympathetic groups and wealthy individual donors — is set to kick off in the coming days. At the same time, dozens of leading consumer advocates, patient associations and medical groups, working independently and alongside the Obama administration, are scrambling to put together initiatives to tout the law's benefits. The effort is up against an intense Republican campaign that has painted the healthcare bill as a symbol of all that's wrong with Democratic-dominated Washington.
Another day, another Johnson & Johnson news item -- and once again, not a flattering one. The drugmaker, which can't seem to get its act straight lately, last week received a warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that it is illegally marketing two products. In a letter to J&J's DePuy Orthopaedics, the FDA says it has learned that the company is marketing the TruMatch without the required marketing clearance or approval and in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. TruMatch Personalized Solutions System is a high-tech CT scanner that can create detailed 3-D views of a patient's knee for implant surgery. The regulatory authority, which recently began a crackdown on medical devices, asked the company to submit information to gain marketing approval. "The FDA will evaluate the information you submit and decide whether your product may be legally marketed," the letter stated.