Doctors claim they are seeing more and more cases of MRSA in children. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 95,000 people in the United States developed serious MRSA infections in 2005, the latest data available. While the CDC cannot say how many children were infected, the agency reported the greatest increase in hospital visits were among those under 18 during an eight-year period ending in 2005. Children are especially vulnerable because of their underdeveloped immune systems, experts say.
West Penn Allegheny Health System released quarterly results showing operating losses of $9.1 million and a net loss of $5.6 million for the quarter ending Dec. 31. Despite a 2% increase in acute patient admissions across the system in the second half of 2008, "we're starting to see quite a bit of softening in volume," president and CEO Christopher Olivia told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "That's in concert with what a lot of other health systems are recognizing."
Kansas City hospitals have not yet succumbed to a flurry of layoffs, but administrators say they are in the middle of choppy waters trying to avoid them. Income is faltering because investments are down, government aid is dropping, and patient volume has dipped. Now hospitals are struggling with having to care for a growing number of patients who cannot pay their bills.
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said in court papers that a lawsuit filed against it by the son of a woman who died after wandering away from her hospital room was full of "scandalous" and "irrelevant" claims. Rose Lee Diggs, 89, was found on the roof of UPMC Montefiore in December, hours after she had wandered away from her 12th-floor room. The lawsuit, filed by her son in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, alleges negligence by hospital staff and includes claims that hospital workers attempted a cover-up by replacing a broken lock that led to the roof of the hospital where the woman was found.
Seattle Children's plan to more than double the number of beds and building sizes on its Laurelhurst campus between now and 2030 is either a needed expansion sensitively balanced with community concerns or an unnecessarily massive proposal whose effects cannot be mitigated. Those were the two views presented at the opening of a Seattle hearing examiner hearing on the proposal.
A lawmaker has filed a bill seeking to limit Florida's authority to operate a Medicaid privatization experiment even as state officials have begun to take a stand against the troubled pilot program. The proposal seeks to revoke the Agency for Health Care Administration's power to get money from the federal agency which helps fund the pilot program. Rep. Elaine Schwartz, D-Hollywood, filed the proposal and said her office is flooded with residents who can't get doctor's appointments and medicine.
Two intensive-care patients at Roseland Community Hospital in Chicago recently died after becoming infected with a common bacterium sometimes found in intensive-care units. Officials learned Feb. 23 that four patients in the hospital's ICU were infected with acinetobacter, the hospital said in a statement. Before the outbreak was contained, seven of the ward's 10 patients were infected. Hospital spokeswoman Sharon Thurman confirmed Monday that two of the patients later died. It is unclear whether the bacterial infections contributed to the two deaths at Roseland.
Cancer doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital plan within a year to read the genetic fingerprints of nearly all new patients' tumors to customize treatment. The goal is to spare patients from the traditional approach to cancer care, when expensive drugs with harmful side effects are often given without knowing whether they will work.
As a conversation about healthcare reform intensifies, much of the focus is on the role the government and insurance companies will play in a revamped health system. But surprisingly little attention has been paid to the role that patients and their doctors have played in shaping the way medical care is delivered, according to this article in the New York Times. Ultimately, for any reform to work, patients will have to change their behavior, the article states.
Dentists are in such short supply in Maine that primary care doctors who do their medical residency in the state are learning to perform basic dental skills through a program that began in 2005. In Maine, training physicians in dentistry provides a dental safety net for the rural poor who have never had one, doctors and dentists said. About two-thirds of the residents who have trained at the dental clinic now practice in the state, many in rural areas.
