Children's Healthcare of Atlanta has began construction of a new four-story facility at Hughes Spalding Children's Hospital. The facility, with 24 patient beds for children, is projected to open in 2010. It will house specialty clinics for sickle cell, asthma and child protection, as well as an enhanced emergency department.
Nearly 200 residents and local activists gathered evening at the parking lot of Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center in Plainfield, NJ, and rode away in a mock funeral procession to protest the hospital's closing. The 355-bed facility stopped accepting patients earlier this month, making it the fifth acute-care hospital to close in New Jersey this year.
Two Waterbury, CT, hospitals are fighting to keep their heart center open, saying that heart attack victims could die needlessly unless the state approves an extension of the program. The Heart Center of Greater Waterbury was started in July 2005 at Waterbury Hospital and St. Mary's Hospital to provide open-heart surgery and angioplasty. It serves 18 towns and cities. The state's approval of the center as a three-year "demonstration project" has expired, and the center has failed to do its required number of open heart surgeries, however. Now the hospitals have asked the state Office of Health Care Access for a six-month extension of the contract.
The Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board has ruled that Plainfield does not need its own hospital and deferred a decision on whether DuPage County should get a second proton therapy cancer-treatment center. This is the third time in five years that the board has rejected plans by Naperville-based Edward Hospital to build a $234 million, 162-bed hospital. Edward officials say the hospital is needed because of the area's rapid growth and because one-third of the patients at its crowded Naperville campus come from the Plainfield area.
Brookwood Medical Center appears ready to compete with Baptist Health System in the race to be the first to build a hospital in Hoover, AL. An amendment to the State Health Plan proposed by a lawyer for Brookwood would smooth the way for approval of a 140-bed hospital in Hoover. Baptist Health System filed a similar amendment in late July, but key differences distinguish the two. Baptist's version was tailored to its desire to transfer up to 140 beds from Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham to a medical complex Baptist owns in Jefferson County. Brookwood's version would not restrict the hospital to Jefferson County and would allow the creation of newly licensed beds and not restrict the project to a transfer of existing beds.
The Care Quality Commission has set out new ground rules for how National Health Service trusts must make improvements in preventing the spread of hospital superbugs in England. All hospital boards will have to sign a declaration in January saying whether or not they have met the various requirements on the U.K. Government's hygiene code. Trusts that are unable to comply to the new code face the risk of not meeting the standard for registration as an NHS provider. Without the registration, hospitals could lose a licence to treat patients and be forced to stop operating.