Delos M. "Toby" Cosgrove arrived at the Cleveland Clinic in 1975 as an "incredibly poor" 34-year-old dreaming of a life as a cardiac surgeon. "Heart surgery was the astronaut corps of health care," he says. He had $3,000 in his bank account, left over from running an Air Force hospital in Vietnam, where he had won the Bronze Star. All his earthly belongings, including a Chevy Vega that was too flimsy to tow, fit in the back of a U-Haul. During his first year someone was shot dead at the clinic's front door. The bank in the basement was robbed.
Building in-house healthcare technology is a daunting task, especially in a market dominated by off-the-shelf options like Epic and Cerner. But those options can be expensive and disruptive to existing physician workflow, leading a number of health organizations to start from scratch. "We found the IT solutions in the open market were not going to meet our needs," said Landmark Hospitals CEO William Kapp. Landmark needed an electronic health record (EHR) that would function not only as a medical record, but also as a health information exchange (HIE) between its five long-term acute care hospitals. "We couldn't find a solution that made any sense for us and the existing options were prohibitively expensive."
HOUSTON — Nine years after her husband died unexpectedly in a hospital, Linda Carswell is still fighting to get his heart back. Jerry Carswell, a state championship-winning high school track coach, died in 2004 while hospitalized for kidney stones. Christus St. Catherine Hospital, where he died, promised a full autopsy, but did not perform toxicology tests that could have determined whether the painkillers Carswell was given had anything to do with his death. His heart was also kept by the hospital that conducted the autopsy — something Linda Carswell found out well after her husband's burial.
Hey pal, looking for a pickup truck? I have a 2004 Ford F-150 for you. How's $102,478 sound? Crazy? When it comes to their health care, Americans accept deals like that every day, paying twice to 10 times more than others pay for the same services of the same quality not just in another country, but in the next county, down the street — or even in the same facility. Why? In the fee-for-service system we pay for items rather than results — and the sellers mostly decide what we need. Insurance separates the buyer into two parties: patient and payer. Secret contracts and lack of quality information make it all but impossible to comparison shop.
Hundreds of Massachusetts residents may have been inadvertently exposed to measles, a highly contagious disease, while visiting two hospitals in Greater Boston last month, state health officials said Tuesday evening. The alert covers anyone who may be showing early symptoms of the disease, which resembles a cold at first, and visited Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston between August 17?23 or MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham on Aug. 23 and 24. Two people infected with measles, who apparently had no connection to each other, went to those hospitals for medical care, said Dr. Alfred DeMaria, an infectious disease specialist at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis-based Catholic health care provider has finalized its merger with a Wisconsin health company. SSM Health Care announced its purchase of the Dean Health Systems group of Madison, Wis., in April. The merger took effect on Sept. 1 after receiving regulatory and shareholder approval The nonprofit SSM operates 18 hospitals in Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Oklahoma. Dean Health Systems is a physician-owned organization with more than 60 clinics, plus eye care and pharmacy operations.