A little over a year ago Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital undertook a process to organize the way it treats stroke. Since then the hospital has seen a significant increase in the number of stroke patients discharged. Stroke discharges increased to 80 patients for June, up from 43 patients in June 2009.
Hospitals' Dallas-Fort Worth ad spending in good shape
The weak economy has siphoned money from advertising budgets in most major industries, but local hospital advertising has remained steady, thanks to one company. Texas Health Resources, the largest hospital system in North Texas, accounted for about half of not-for-profit advertising spending last year.
Experts have warned that a new type of drug-resistant superbug is emerging in UK hospitals.
Q: What is NDM-1?
New Delhi metallo-ß-lactamase-1, or NDM-1 for short, is a gene carried by bacteria that makes the strain resistant to carbapenem antibiotics. This is concerning because these antibiotics are some of the most powerful ones, used on hard-to-treat infections that evade other drugs.
Tennessee's frailest and tiniest infants go to intensive care units to get healthier, but in some cases the feeding tubes and intravenous lines designed to heal them actually make them sicker, a new state report shows. High-risk babies in Tennessee are 40% more likely than the national average to get blood infections from central lines, the state found in its first detailed look at bacterial blood infections in neonatal intensive care units. Among the tiniest infants, born weighing 1.65 pounds or less, infections were even higher — 70% above the national rate. Health officials said improperly inserted or poorly maintained lines could be driving the high rates. In infants, the lines are put into the umbilical area or in veins in the upper arm. A year-old statewide initiative aims to cut Tennessee's infection rate by more than half in the next five years by bringing together people across the health-care industry, including rival hospitals, to share best practices.
Former healthcare CEO Rick Scott lashed out Tuesday at his Republican primary foe in the governor's race, Attorney General Bill McCollum, accusing him of harassing employees and patients of a medical company Scott founded. During an impromptu press conference, Scott ripped McCollum as "the Tonya Harding of Florida politics" for what he described as an underhanded attempt to dig up dirt that could boost McCollum's gubernatorial hopes. "I'm fed up. I'm fed up with this junk," Scott told reporters. The former Columbia/HCA hospital chief said he had decided to fly into Tallahassee to speak with reporters because McCollum's campaign was calling employees and former patients of Solantic — a chain of 34 walk-in medical clinics targeting the uninsured. "His campaign's dying. He's trying to come up with some way to smear me. That's what this is about, Chicago-style smear politics," Scott said.
The former executive of Physicians Regional Medical Center at Collier Boulevard has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Health Management Associates that says the hospital chain illegally induced physicians with money and favors in exchange for patients referrals, according to the complaint unsealed last week in federal court in Tampa. The lawsuit was filed under seal in January by Michael Mastej, the former CEO of the 100-bed hospital when it opened in February 2007. He was terminated eight months later in October 2007. Mastej had worked at the Naples-based HMA starting in 2001, serving as vice president of acquisitions before taking the helm of the new East Naples hospital and overseeing its construction and launch. In his lawsuit, Mastej said HMA officials induced physicians to refer patients to its hospitals in Naples by making payments to them, disguised as payments for on-call services, by providing reduced or free rentals for offices, and by flying physicians by private jet to the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, GA.