The Chicago 2016 bid team is turning to the city's hospitals for help in attracting the Olympic Games. The sheer number of people at any summer Olympics requires a large pool of medical personnel, perhaps thousands. So Chicago's hospitals are being asked to submit proposals to fill this need of volunteers by becoming official medical-care providers if the city were to host the 2016 Summer Games. This request has brought some big names to the table, including Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Rush University Medical Center, and University of Chicago Medical Center. These and other hospitals are considering whether to submit a joint proposal or go at it alone, according to hospital sources.
Some 650 of the 8,000 Iraqi physicians who fled the country since 2003 due to violence have returned to their jobs in the past two months, a Health Ministry official announced. The doctors have gone back to hospitals across Iraq due to the improved security, said Health Ministry Inspector General Adel Muhsin. Iraq's medical system is understaffed because of workers fleeing, and several weeks ago the government appealed to doctors to come home.
Patient-centered care, chronic disease management, self-care, and medical homes are all buzzwords in health policy circles due to the national dialogue about quality and systemic reform. But countless doctors are moving ahead on their own, reinventing their clinical practices and finding more-effective and more-fulfilling ways of practicing medicine. One such trend is the micro-practice: a low-overhead, high-tech office that gives physicians more control over how they treat patients and more time to spend with them.
Orlando is poised to become the only city in Florida with competing heart-transplant programs, after the state gave approval to the area's largest hospital chains to start the programs at their main facilities. Both Orlando Health and Florida Hospital lauded the surprise move by the Agency for Health Care Administration, which received the transplant applications in June. Florida Hospital expects to do a dozen of the surgeries in its first year, and expand to 18 transplants by its second. Orlando Health plans to do six heart transplants initially, then double to 12 procedures by its second year in operation.
The Lenexa, KS, City Council has unanimously approved a plan for a complex of three medical facilities at City Center, a massive multi-use development. The complex will include a two-story, 38,000-square-foot care facility for critically ill patients, a 10,000 square-foot one-story emergency room, and a four-level, 54,000 square-foot building with an imaging center on the first floor and doctors' offices on the top three.
Walk into a hospital in the Treasure Coast region of Florida, and on most days you will wait 30 minutes or less to see a doctor—30 minutes less than the national average wait for emergency rooms. Like many hospitals, the Treasure Coast facilities have seen an increase in emergency department patients. But hospitals in the region are trying to use technology and time-saving measures to reduce the crowding that troubles other medical centers.