At the new $1.1 billion Johns Hopkins Hospital there will be Xboxes and a basketball court for kids, sleeper-sofas for families, single rooms for all patients, an improved dining menu and extensive soundproofing. Health care is a dominant industry in Maryland, responsible for about 11 percent of all jobs in the state, and it is growing, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Hopkins joins Mercy Medical Center, the University of Maryland Medical Center and other area hospitals in replacing buildings and adding the most modern equipment and amenities to lure patients, keep doctors and expand business.
A Consumer reports investigation focused on the 92 pediatric intensive-care units in 31 states plus Washington, D.C., that publicly reported enough data to make statistically valid assessments of their rate of bloodstream infections. PICUs had infection rates that were 20 percent higher than national rates for adult ICUs. PICUs averaged 1.8 bloodstream infections for every 1,000 days children were on central lines, compared with an estimated national average of 1.5 bloodstream infections per 1,000 central line days in adult ICUs in 2009.
GE Healthcare is discontinuing a Web-based ambulatory electronic health record (EHR) product it purchased less than two years ago. This week the company informed customers of the GE Centricity Advance EHR that it will no longer support the product after June 30. GE Healthcare instead will offer upgrades to its flagship GE Centricity Practice Solution, a combined EHR and practice management system, for approximately the same price as Centricity Advance.
At any given time, 1 in 20 hospital patients is battling an infection that they got on site, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Hospitals now pay greater attention to hand hygiene—Purell dispensers have become ubiquitous—but their main infection control methods haven't changed much for decades. Most rooms are still disinfected by housekeepers armed with chemical cleaners. Enter the Xenex, a mobile, robotic device that combats germs with blasts of light.
The health care industry is booming in Alaska, and growth will continue. Health care providers pay a $1.53 billion annual statewide payroll with nearly $1 billion of that in the Anchorage and Matanuska-Susitna regions of Southcentral Alaska. Jobs in health care totaled 31,800 in 2010, up 46 percent in 10 years. The growth rate is five times the rate of the state's overall population, and three times that of all other sectors of the economy.
Hospitals have fired their first salvo against efforts by Utah's Medicaid program to crack down on fraud, waste and abuse. Three IASIS Healthcare Inc. facilities—Davis Hospital & Medical Center, Salt Lake Regional Medical Center and Jordan Valley Medical Center—are suing Medicaid's new Office of the Inspector General (OIG), saying the agency has no authority to demand repayment of $2.7 million in allegedly overpaid emergency department charges.