The Laurelhurst Community Club has appealed Seattle's environmental impact statement for Seattle Children's Hospital's proposed expansion plan. The proposed hospital expansion would more than double the number of beds and building sizes on the hospital's 22-acre campus and the 1.8 acres facing it. Laurelhurst residents appealed the environmental impact review to the Seattle Hearing Examiner, saying it: "understates the expansion's harmful impacts, including gridlock, and refuses to study any compromise alternatives that would help prevent them."
Although the federal and state governments provide services or coverage for uninsured children, adults without insurance are often left with minimal access to healthcare. Often, they resort to using emergency room visits for primary care. But at the University of California-Irvine Outreach Clinic, medical students provide comprehensive healthcare to real patients—most of whom are uninsured, don't speak English, and haven't seen a doctor in years.
Key Senate chairmen Max Baucus and Ted Kennedy will be central to the big health-reform push in Washington this year, but they are part of a larger, bipartisan group that is meeting every week to try and figure out the details of how to actually create a bill that might get broad support. Baucus calls the group, which includes Democratic and Republican leaders of the finance, health and budget committees, the "Board of Directors."
President Obama has dedicated $1.1 billion in the economic stimulus package for federal agencies to oversee studies on the merits of competing medical treatments. The comparative effectiveness research approach is aimed at finding the best treatments at the best prices. Proponents say reducing ineffective or unproven care is one way to rein in health costs. Skeptics, however, say Obama's decision to invest heavily in such research will lead to European-style rationing in which patients are denied lifesaving therapies to save money.
The impending national discussion about broadening access to healthcare, improving medical practice, and saving money is giving a group of scientists an opening to propose shutting down the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. Critics of alternative medicine say the vast majority of studies of homeopathy, acupuncture, therapeutic touch, and other treatments based on unconventional understandings of physiology and disease have shown little or no effect. Further, they argue that the field's more-plausible interventions can be studied just as well in other parts of NIH, where they would need to compete head-to-head with conventional research projects.
Broward Health's North Broward Medical Center has named Bruce E. Janke, MD, medical director of its newly opened Joint Replacement Center. Janke played a vital role in the process of attaining Joint Commission Certification for hip and knee replacement at NBMC, the first and only hospital in Broward County, FL, to achieve this certification. The new Joint Replacement Center features private patient rooms, family centered patient education, group therapy, and the latest advances in joint replacement surgery.