The Illinois health planning board rejected proposals made by Vista Health Systems and Advocate Health Care to to build hospitals in Lindenhurst, IL, and near Round Lake. The Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board issued an "intent to deny" to the applications, saying Lake County has too many hospital beds already. Vista Health asked approval for a three-story, 140-bed hospital in Lindenhurst, and Advocate Health asked to build a 144-bed hospital in the Round Lake area.
A delay in performing a Caesarean section during Jacob Tomlian's birth will cost Plantation, FL-based Westside Regional Medical Center and Mark Grenitz, MD, $30 million. The delay left the 16-year-old with cerebral palsy, mental retardation, a spastic gait and deafness in one ear, according to jurors in Broward County. Jurors found the hospital 85 percent responsible and Grenitz 15 percent responsible in the medical malpractice case, according to attorneys.
The bacterial super bug Clostridium difficile thrives in unsanitary hospital conditions and in response to antibiotic treatments. As a result, there is a vicious cycle where the healthcare industry feeds the problem it is trying to treat. Facing pressure from infection-control physicians and the federal government, doctors and hospitals are now trying to enforce sanitation standards and curb the overprescription of antibiotics in an effort to curb C. diff.
Through a collaboration between the University of Kansas Hospital and the Kansas City Cancer Center, physicians are seeking better results for patients and for fewer area residents to go out of town for treatments. The collaboration allows a group of blood and marrow transplant physicians to pool resources and do more research.The program's five physicians also perform transplants on outpatients at KU Hospital's Westwood campus, while inpatients receive transplants at the hospital's main campus in Kansas City, KS.
Private South African hospitals are reacting angrily to a Council for Medical Schemes' report on private healthcare costs, saying it is riddled with errors and casts them unfairly as the villains responsible for increasing healthcare bills. The Council and private hospitals have a long history of arguing about their capacity to produce data on the private hospital industry, and the latest report is contributing to the tensions.
England Health Secretary Alan Johnson has appeared to have averted the threat of industrial action across the NHS in England with a pay offer for 1.2 million nurses and ancillary staff worth almost 8% over three years. The nurses will get an immediate increase of at least 2.75%, which will raise the minimum starting salary for a qualified nurse to more than £20,000.