Through five hours, 73 witnesses and 71 orally read letters, testimony poured in Friday for and against the idea of building a hospital in Crystal Lake. The public hearing by the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board often sounded like a debate between "Mercy Health System ought to build a hospital in Crystal Lake" and "No, it would be better if Centegra Health System built a hospital in Huntley." But officials from Sherman Hospital in Elgin and other existing hospitals that serve Crystal Lake and Huntley residents reminded state board members why they had tentatively voted in June not to approve either new hospital. Trent Gordon, an executive of Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington, used this "plague against both your houses" idea to create some humor when he became the second-to-last witness to speak. "I believe we have all reached an agreement here today," Gordon said. "Centegra argues that the Mercy proposal should not be built. Mercy argues that the Centegra proposal should not be built. I agree with everyone." Review board General Counsel Frank Urso said board members probably will make final decisions about both proposals when they meet in December.
If this is a war, Mission Health System has crossed the demilitarized zone and set up a beachhead near the enemy's fortress. While the language is a tad melodramatic, hospital officials, physicians and some politicians have used such martial terminology to describe Mission's latest expansion, a partnership with Hendersonville's Pardee Memorial Hospital. The partners are building an 80,000-square foot medical office building and urgent care center literally on the Henderson-Buncombe county line—territory traditionally the domain of Park Ridge Hospital, a 103-bed facility just four miles south. They're saying they'll do the very thing that we do—they'll duplicate all our community services to drive all the potential competitors out of business, so one day there will be a dogwood on every single hospital health care provider in this region," said Park Ridge Vice President Jason Wells, referring to Mission's symbol, the dogwood tree flower. The battle for customers in south Buncombe and north Henderson counties is emblematic of the strategy at hospitals nationally and in North Carolina, where patients spent nearly $20 billion in 2009.
Most of us believe we are rational decision makers. But medical decisions are especially complex, thanks to the numerous unknowns and the uniqueness of each person's body. Suppose you've just found out that you or a loved one has prostate cancer, one of the many examples in Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband's illuminating new book, "Your Medical Mind." Nearly every urologist would recommend radical surgery to remove the organ. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? But let's look at the numbers more closely. Prostate cancer is slow-moving; more people die with it than from it. According to one 2004 study, for every 48 prostate surgeries performed, only one patient benefits—the other 47 patients would have lived just as long without surgery.
A day after a government panel said that healthy men should no longer get screened for prostate cancer, some doctors' groups and cancer patients' advocates began a campaign to convince the nation that the advice was misguided. Their hope is to copy the success of women's groups that successfully persuaded much of the country two years ago that it was a mistake for the same panel, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, to recommend against routine mammograms for women in their 40s. This time, the task force found that a P.S.A. blood test to screen for prostate cancer does not save lives, but results in needless medical procedures that have left tens of thousands of men impotent, incontinent or both. Both sides in the battle have marshaled distinct arguments, and both said their only goal was to protect patients. Caught in the middle are 44 million men in the United States over the age of 50 who must now decide whom to believe.
Federal inspectors will soon pay an unannounced visit to Grady Memorial Hospital. The federal survey was triggered by the death of 60-year-old Gloria Shavers who fell to her death from an open 11th floor window of the hospital last month. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesperson Lee Millman says investigators plan to conduct a full survey of the hospital. "The facility agrees to provide quality care in a safe environment and we agree to pay for that care. If there's a deficiency than the survey If it was not corrected and it was severe enough then we could terminate the funding." If violations are found and the hospital does not adequately address them, Millman says that could put Grady's Medicare funding in jeopardy. But Millman says those cases are rare. "Hospitals do want to come into compliance. We have found that."
Ball Memorial Hospital officials spent much of the mid-2000s looking over their shoulders. Indianapolis-based hospitals grew dramatically in the first decade of the 21st century, building new facilities and advertising to attract patients from throughout Central Indiana. By 2007, one of the state's largest healthcare providers, Clarian Health, was even considering building a hospital facility on Muncie's west side. The plans never came to fruition, but threat of competition combined with millions of dollars in losses -- much of it due to what the hospital called unfair federal Medicare reimbursement -- had Ball Memorial reeling. By 2008, the merger of Ball Memorial into Clarian was announced. It became official in 2009. By 2010, Clarian announced it would change its name to Indiana University Health even while economies of scale meant IU Health Ball Memorial's finances were slowly improving. The upturn in finances was tied very directly to improvements in the relationship with local doctors, both physicians and hospital officials say.