The Dallas hospital treating the first Ebola case diagnosed in the U.S. sent the patient, Thomas Duncan, home the first time he showed up because the doctors who saw him never learned that he'd just come from West Africa. The hospital has blamed a flaw in its electronic health records for keeping information collected by a nurse, including Duncan's travel history, from being presented to the treating physician, who mistook Duncan's symptoms for a low-level infection, on Sept. 25. The apparent mistake meant Duncan was not admitted and isolated until Sept. 28. That increased the risk of infection for those he came in contact with while he was sick, including his family, who are now quarantined in their Dallas apartment.
Phoenix Children's Hospital has struck a deal with billionaire entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong to bring cutting-edge genetic treatments to children who are seriously ill. Phoenix Children's Hospital CEO Bob Meyer said Soon-Shiong's technology will be used for children with aggressive forms of cancer that conventional surgery and chemotherapy failed to slow or cure. Doctors will use Soon-Shiong's data-based technology to provide speedy genetic and protein analysis to identify potential treatments for seriously ill patients. The technology's centerpiece is a supercomputer that should be able to deliver results within seven to 10 days, Meyer said. Soon-Shiong, a surgeon who is part owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, has embarked on a series of acquisitions in recent years under his parent company, NantWorks.
Consultants for three Augusta hospitals took turns Monday bashing each other's proposals for a Columbia County hospital in front of two state officials who will have to decide among them. Criticisms included locations, cost estimates, staffing and even sincerity. Each side had just 10 minutes to raise verbal objections against the applications submitted to the Georgia Department of Community Health. State law requires agency approval to build new facilities as part of a policy designed to minimize duplication of costly medical resources. The department has until Nov. 26 to decide among Doctors Hospital, University Hospital or Georgia Regents Medical Center. Or it could deny all of them.
If you are a Christian who doesn't smoke, abstains from sex outside your heterosexual marriage and can get your priest to vouch that you go to church at least three times a month, you may qualify for a new Catholic alternative to health insurance. Taking a cue from evangelicals, a group of traditionalist Catholics on Thursday (Oct. 2) unveiled a cost-sharing network that they say honors their values and ensures that they are not even indirectly supporting health care services such as abortion that contradict their beliefs. Christ Medicus Foundation CURO, as the group is called, will be financially integrated with Samaritan Ministries International, which was launched in 1991 by an evangelical home-schooling dad.
Facebook Inc already knows who your friends are and the kind of things that grab your attention. Soon, it could also know the state of your health. On the heels of fellow Silicon Valley technology companies Apple Inc and Google Inc, Facebook is plotting its first steps into the fertile field of healthcare, said three people familiar with the matter. The people requested anonymity as the plans are still in development. The company is exploring creating online "support communities" that would connect Facebook users suffering from various ailments. A small team is also considering new "preventative care" applications that would help people improve their lifestyles.
More than 50,000 babies are born each year in military hospitals, and while most are delivered without major complications, the recent Pentagon military health system review found that for half the measures used by the National Perinatal Information Center to compare quality of care, the military is failing infants and mothers. In good news for children born in the military's 56 major medical centers, the facilities have statistically lower rates of infant mortality and maternal trauma than the NPIC averages. But for other measures — postpartum hemorrhage, neonatal trauma and readmission to the hospital after birth for both moms and babies — military hospitals are performing "statistically worse" than national averages.