Last week, Kim Kardashian delivered her son, Saint West, in pure Hollywood style — shelling out $4,000 a night for a luxe suite at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Her fancy birthing digs came complete with a personal doula, plush purple throw pillows, vegan meals and Instagram-friendly recessed lighting for the selfie-obsessed mom. But while such excess is to be expected from the reality star, it's not just Hollywood celebrities who are turning their hospital stays into VIP affairs. Most NYC hospitals now boast rooms — costing from $250 to a reported $4,000 a night, on top of what's covered by insurance — dedicated to patients who want their hospital to feel more like a hotel.
In a stunning announcement that has South Bay mothers of newborns reeling, Santa Clara County officials on Friday said hundreds of babies, mothers and employees may have been exposed to a nurse with tuberculosis at Valley Medical Center's mother and infant care center. As a result, those who came into contact with the nurse from mid-August through mid-November will have to undergo testing for the potentially deadly disease. And as a precaution, all 350 infants born during that period also will be required to undergo a daily oral antibiotic treatment for six to nine months, whether or not they test positive, officials said.
The Missoula Police Department shut down the 500 block of West Broadway for 30 minutes Saturday afternoon as officers investigated the death of a 53-year-old woman. Authorities responded to reports of an unresponsive adult female at around 8 a.m. Saturday morning outside St. Patrick's Hospital. They located the body near the southwest corner of the Broadway building, officials said. Blood was found at the scene, but there were no foot tracks in the freshly fallen snow. Investigators said she was homeless, and that she had been in Missoula for at least a month. Sergeant Colin Rose said they shut down West Broadway to search for evidence.
Nearly a year of controversy over the fate of Lakewood Hospital appears to be nearing an end. Lakewood City Council plans to vote Dec. 21 on a deal with the Cleveland Clinic that would close the city-owned hospital, which the Clinic manages, and replace it with a Clinic-owned family health center and emergency room. Barring any significant developments, council should approve it. City voters have had their say -- turning down a ballot issue that would have required a public vote before the hospital could close or downsize. The Lakewood Hospital Association and the Clinic proposed closure in January, citing declining revenue from the hospital's in-patient mode of delivering health care.
The FDA has approved uridine triacetate (Vistogard) to treat overdoses of the chemotherapy drugs fluorouracil and capecitabine and to treat severe, early-onset toxicities occurring with correct doses of these agents, the agency announced Friday.
The federal government is penalizing 758 hospitals with higher rates of patient safety incidents, and more than half of those places had also been fined last year, Medicare records released late Wednesday show. Among the hospitals getting punished for the first time are some well-known institutions, including Stanford Health Care in Northern California, Denver Health Medical Center and two satellite hospitals run by the Mayo Clinic Health System in Minnesota, according to the federal data. The fines are based on the government's assessment of the frequency of several kinds of infections, sepsis, hip fractures and other complications.