Both Rex Healthcare and WakeMed Health & Hospitals are plotting big growth plans in Raleigh, NC. Rex Healthcare is planning a $150 million outpatient facility across from its main campus in West Raleigh, NC. At the same time, WakeMed Health & Hospitals is moving forward with plans to build a $99 million inpatient facility at its main campus in East Raleigh. Both projects come as the hospitals develop strategies to manage services while their facilities become strapped for space as the area's growing population demands more healthcare.
Seattle's Group Health Cooperative has told 363 hospital employees they will be laid off as the nonprofit system's begins the closure of its Hospital & Specialty Center. The precise number of people who will be out of work is hard to determine, because some of the affected workers may be hired to fill openings at its outpatient facilities, or at the expanded Overlake Hospital Medical Center, said Group Health representatives.
In the 1980s and 1990s U.S. medical schools put a cap on enrollments, believing that managed healthcare, among other factors, would create a glut of doctors. Now the impact of a national shortage of surgeons and family practice doctors is echoing across the country. The shortage of surgeons is a particular threat to the healthcare of 54 million rural Americans, medical specialists say.
Nasvhille, TN-based Skyline Medical Center is planning a $3.2 million expansion that will double the number of beds in its neurological intensive care unit to accommodate growing demand for treatment for strokes and other neuroscience services. The project is scheduled for completion by the end of 2008.
Russian hospitals are understaffed, poorly equipped and rife with corruption, dragging down healthcare in an already unhealthy nation. The Russian government is pumping $6.4 billion into revamping healthcare, and much of that money is paying for the construction of eight high-tech medical centers across the country. The funds will also be used for new X-ray machines, electrocardiograms and ambulances at hospitals, and raises for family doctors.
Additional cases of carbon monoxide poisoning might be caught if doctors began routinely testing emergency room patients for carbon monoxide exposure, a study suggests. Because the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning resemble those of other illnesses, hospitals may provide improper treatment and return the patient to the environment where the exposure occurred, said researchers from Brown University. A simple test, using a device clamped on one finger, could measure oxygen and carbon monoxide levels in the blood quickly and inexpensively, according to the researchers.