Community Health Network has plans to announce a $130 million expansion of its Community Hospital South in Indianapolis. Community South already has been undergoing an $11 million renovation and expansion of its emergency department. The new expansion adds to the ongoing hospital-building boom and heightening hospital competition across Central Indiana.
Albany Medical Center has requested New York state approval for a $360 million complex that would add 116 beds to the facility. The expansion proposal is due to increased demand at the facility--admissions to Albany Med have risen by more than 27 percent over the past several years, officials said. If approved, construction would begin in late 2009 and be completed by early 2012.
A shortage of neurosurgeons at St. Petersburg, FL-based Bayfront Medical Center has prompted emergency workers to take trauma victims to Tampa hospitals. Bayfront has long struggled with keeping enough neurosurgeons for emergency calls, but the hospital was pushed into a crisis when two of its four neurosurgeons stopped working call. The medical center's troubles are the latest sign of a Florida-wide shortage of medical specialists willing to work emergencies.
Morton Plant Mease Health Care's is set to open a $9-million free-standing emergency room in Tampa Bay, FL. The freestanding ER is only the fourth in the state, and is designed to provide emergency care in an underserved area. The facility is the latest contribution to Morton Plant CEO Philip Beauchamp's legacy of improving the community's access to medical care, and it also might be one of his last. Beauchamp has announced he will retire in 2009.
Backed by a $2.2 million federal grant and drawing on advice from a task force of experts, Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, is putting in what emergency department chairman Dr. Mark Smith hopes will be a first draft of the emergency department of the future. The ER is designed to handle a sudden influx of mass casualties from a natural disaster, biological attack or a pandemic, and at the same time prevent the hospital-acquired infections.
Allscripts has announced a collaboration between the National ePrescribing Patient Safety Initiative and Google Health to provide physicians a new means of sharing health information over the Internet with their patients. The software is offered at no cost to physicians across America as a key element of NEPSI. Under the collaboration, physicians can use the NEPSI solution to securely transfer their patients' medication information into a Google Health account upon request by the user/patient.