New Orleans residents and officials are locked in a debate over which would be better for those involved: building a new veterans hospital where the vacant Lindy Boggs Medical Center now stands, or tearing down a neighborhood so the hospital can be close to the downtown medical schools and the city's nascent bioscience corridor.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has planned for two years to erect a new hospital on the edge of downtown New Orleans, where it could share services with Louisiana State University's new teaching hospital and help anchor a biosciences district that city leaders envision as an economic driver for the region. But building the hospital downtown would mean displacing a neighborhood filled with historic houses.
Health experts are meeting in Tampa, FL, to find ways of improving medical care for minorities across the state. They have identified gaps in seven areas of healthcare, including cancer, diabetes, heart disease, oral health, adult and child immunizations, maternal/infant health, and HIV/AIDS. At the Minority Health Disparities Summit, they are focusing their efforts on developing strategies to close the gaps. Due to a growing population, Florida's minorities face barriers to accessing healthcare, including the lack of insurance, that make them less healthy than the their white counterparts.
A new Bi-State Nursing Workforce Innovation Center, designed to help improve nursing environments in the Kansas City area, has been announced by a group of partners and donors. The center will be at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Nursing, and is designed to retain good nurses frustrated by low staffing numbers, high patient loads, and heavy paperwork burdens. In 2007, Kansas City area hospitals reported a 9.4% vacancy rate in their registered nursing positions and a 13% annual turnover rate.
The third annual South Florida conference of the Florida Health Care Coalition, made up of some of the largest employers in the state, attracted more than 200 people to hear panel discussions on increasing quality and controlling costs in healthcare. These are the main goals of the 24-year-old coalition, which includes companies like Lockheed Martin, Disney World, Florida Power & Light, and the school boards of Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Some of the ideas presented during the conference were cheap and simple, such as starting wellness programs.
Children's Healthcare of Atlanta has began construction of a new four-story facility at Hughes Spalding Children's Hospital. The facility, with 24 patient beds for children, is projected to open in 2010. It will house specialty clinics for sickle cell, asthma and child protection, as well as an enhanced emergency department.
Nearly 200 residents and local activists gathered evening at the parking lot of Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center in Plainfield, NJ, and rode away in a mock funeral procession to protest the hospital's closing. The 355-bed facility stopped accepting patients earlier this month, making it the fifth acute-care hospital to close in New Jersey this year.
The Prince George's (MD) Hospital Center and other health facilities in Prince George's County have received $5.6.million in state and county money, the latest funding in a public effort to stave off the collapse of the hospital system. Dimensions Healthcare System, the nonprofit company that runs the center and the four other county health facilities, received the payment. The county and the state are scheduled to pay about $24 million each in quarterly installments over two years.
An estimated 25% of Hispanics in the United States don't have a regular healthcare provider to treat their medical needs, and these people tend to be the newest immigrants and those without health insurance, according to a survey. One key finding of the survey was how many Hispanics lack a a regular provider to supply medical care, which could pose problems because rates of diabetes are high among Hispanics.
Two Waterbury, CT, hospitals are fighting to keep their heart center open, saying that heart attack victims could die needlessly unless the state approves an extension of the program. The Heart Center of Greater Waterbury was started in July 2005 at Waterbury Hospital and St. Mary's Hospital to provide open-heart surgery and angioplasty. It serves 18 towns and cities. The state's approval of the center as a three-year "demonstration project" has expired, and the center has failed to do its required number of open heart surgeries, however. Now the hospitals have asked the state Office of Health Care Access for a six-month extension of the contract.
The Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board has ruled that Plainfield does not need its own hospital and deferred a decision on whether DuPage County should get a second proton therapy cancer-treatment center. This is the third time in five years that the board has rejected plans by Naperville-based Edward Hospital to build a $234 million, 162-bed hospital. Edward officials say the hospital is needed because of the area's rapid growth and because one-third of the patients at its crowded Naperville campus come from the Plainfield area.
