WASHINGTON -- Federal health regulators are allowing imports from overseas of critical intravenous drugs used to nourish premature infants, amid a shortage that has affected hospitals nationwide. The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday new supplies of drugs used in total parenteral nutrition, a ubiquitous hospital staple, will be available to U.S. patients this week. The injectable formula is used to feed newborn infants, cancer patients and other vulnerable groups who are unable to eat or drink by mouth. "If they cannot eat anything by mouth they have to be provided intravenous nutrition or they'll starve to death in a very short period of time," said Jay Mirtallo, professor of clinical pharmacy at Ohio State University.
BETHEL, Alaska — Americans in some rural places fret at how far away big-city medical help might be in an emergency, or at the long drives they are forced to make for prenatal care, or stitches, or chemotherapy. Dr. Ellen Hodges only wishes it could be so easy. She oversees health care for a population of 28,000, mostly Alaska Natives, here in the state's far west end, spread out over an area the size of Oregon that has almost no roads. People can travel by boat or snow machine at certain times of the year, but not right now.
Reston-based CHS Health Services Inc., an operator of worksite medical clinics, has inked a deal with a surprising client — a Florida nonprofit health system that employs thousands of medical professionals. In one part of the contract with BayCare Health System in Clearwater, Fla., CHS will co-manage two workplace health centers close to hospitals in Tampa and Clearwater, with possible expansion to other BayCare work locations. The clinics will operate under the brand TeamCare, and any patient or dependent over 16 on the health system's medical plan will be eligible for free care there.
For the last 20 years of her life, Huguette Clark, a wealthy and reclusive copper heiress, lived in a Manhattan hospital room, shades drawn, door closed. She played with dolls, watched cartoons and followed the Bush v. Gore hanging chad debacle. (She favored Gore.) Within months of her arrival, the hospital, Beth Israel Medical Center, went after her for an all-out fund-raising campaign. They researched her family history, had officials visit her often in her room and plied her with gifts. The effort, described in court documents, quickly extended to the hospital's chief executive and even his mother, who watched the Smurfs with Mrs. Clark and talked to her about making a will.
The idea that uneven Medicare health care spending around the country is due to wasteful practices and overtreatment—a concept that influenced the federal health law -- takes another hit in a study published Tuesday. The paper concludes that health differences around the country explain between 75 percent and 85 percent of the cost variations. "People really are sicker in some parts of the country," said Dr. Patrick Romano, one of the authors. That's a sour assessment for those hoping to wring large savings out of the health care system by making it more efficient.
At North Shore University Hospital on Long Island, motion sensors, like those used for burglar alarms, go off every time someone enters an intensive care room. The sensor triggers a video camera, which transmits its images halfway around the world to India, where workers are checking to see if doctors and nurses are performing a critical procedure: washing their hands. This Big Brother-ish approach is one of a panoply of efforts to promote a basic tenet of infection prevention, hand-washing, or as it is more clinically known in the hospital industry, hand-hygiene.