Columbia, SC-based Palmetto Health Richland is celebrating the completion of its newly renovated children's hospital, which will become the first such free-standing facility in the state. The renovated facility features 20 extra inpatient beds, 15 new outpatient beds and an updated intensive care unit. In addition, administrators say the new children's hospital is expected to ensure a deeper level of personal care for young patients and their families. Some of the features of the 150,000 square-foot facility are brightly colored walls, themed floors and quiet rooms for family members.
Hospital leaders at Cleveland-based University Hospitals Case Medical Center have asked 40 current and former patients to serve on an advisory council to share their thoughts on shaping a future cancer hospital. UH announced plans for the hospital in 2006 as part of a $1 billion expansion.
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell says the state has begun one of the nation's most comprehensive programs to help people who suffer from chronic diseases. The program is in place in southeastern Pennsylvania and will be expanded statewide over the next year. It calls for educating patients about ways to improve their health, coordinating their care through teams of primary care doctors and other healthcare professionals, and changing the way insurers reimburse providers.
Timeouts to wash hands and put on hairnets, a checklist to ensure that precautions are taken, and advertising campaigns directed at doctors and patients have been credited with reducing the number of serious infections at New York City's public hospitals. Since 2005, central-line bloodstream infections have fallen 55% in adult intensive care units at the city's 11 public hospitals, according to new statistics. Ventilator-associated pneumonia declined by 78%.
A mental health patient at Fort Worth, TX-based John Peter Smith Hospital died after the staff summoned an ambulance to take him to the emergency room instead of calling for doctors a little more than five minutes away. The ambulance took 15 minutes to arrive, and the hospital violated state law by its actions, an investigation by the Texas Department of State Health Services found. JPS' policy for emergency care at the psychiatric facility amounted to performing CPR and calling 911, and that was flawed, according to state investigators.
Efforts to make the blood thinner heparin safer, and to replace supplies that were depleted by a major recall, have meant new safety concerns for hospitals, heart clinics and dialysis centers that use it. The drug was recalled in February after contamination during production in China led to as many as 81 deaths in the United States. Its leading maker has suspended manufacture of most of its heparin products. The resulting shortage of heparin means heparin from new suppliers is arriving in different quantities and strengths than medical staffs are accustomed to, and pharmacists and others worry that patients may be vulnerable to receiving improper doses.