The Boca Raton, FL-based West Boca Medical Center has expanded its neonatal intensive care unit by 10 beds, from 24 to 34. The $3.5 million, 3,200-square-foot addition to the NICU is important to the community, said Larry Coomes, the hospital's chief operating officer. In 2007 302 babies, more than 13% of the 2,254 deliveries at the medical center, were admitted to NICU with an average stay of one to six weeks. Coomes said women are having babies later in life, and some are becoming pregnant through in-vitro fertilization—two factors that increase the risk of premature birth.
A $257 million expansion and seismic-upgrade project for Seattle-based Harborview Medical Center is now nearing completion. The project began with voter-approved bond funding of $193 million in 2000. The project will mark a new step in Harborview's competition for "elective" and short-stay surgeries and procedures that have been identified as lucrative income-generators at other hospitals, say hospital representatives.
Thousands of University of California hospital and campus workers have authorized a strike as early as June unless UC pays them as much as others doing the same work elsewhere. The union represents nearly 20,000 hourly wage workers across UC's five hospitals and 10 campuses. The union and UC have been negotiating for 10 months, and the union wants minimum wage increased to $15 an hour, in addition to a 25% wage increase.
For the second time in three years, Soutwest Atlanta Hospital has opened with new owners. After two bankruptcies and several lawsuits, the hospital is again trying to win the faith of a community that has largely abandoned it. Many people in the community say the area needs a hospital, and they want to preserve the facilty's historic role. But years and competition and neglect drove people away from Southwest.
Registered nurses at Upland, PA-based Crozer-Chester Medical Center are calling for a strike if negotiations with management fail to produce a new contract. The nurse's present deal expires at June 4, and they have called for a three-day strike beginning June 5 if a deal is not reached. The nurses are seeking improved nurse-to-patient ratios, and are seeking resolutions to economic issues such as recruitment and retention of nurses, pension benefits, and healthcare costs.
Whether there are enough doctors to care for patients, particularly if the nation moves toward a new scheme for universal health coverage, is the elephant in the room of the presidential campaign debate on health reform, says Joseph B. Martin, PhD, in his column for the Boston Globe. The solution will require educating doctors and care givers in new collaborative ways, as well as developing new models of healthcare delivery that focus on teamwork, he says.