Search

Like the unpopular kids who never got picked for dodgeball, hospitals could find themselves sidelined by the recent wave of partnerships between physician groups and clinical contract management firms. Clinical [...]

Empty exhibit space--a convention planner's worst nightmare. Mike O'Connell remembers one year in the early 1980s when, just six weeks before the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North [...]

Imagine cutting travel time between two hospitals down to zero. It can be done; all that's needed is a compressed interactive video system. By using that technology, clinicians at Baylor [...]

Diagnostic imaging vendors respond to reform, providers' demands Timing is everything, especially when managing the debut of a new product line. When Eastman Kodak Co. introduced its new portfolio of [...]

H&HN survey: Hospitality leads gain in contracting services In rural Wadesboro, NC, Anson Country Hospital tallied losses of $1.2 million two years in a row under the full auspices of [...]

Realigning the supply chain: Providers & suppliers share risks, rewards The terms 'partnership' is overused to the point of cynicism these days. Yet it means serious business to the health [...]

Executives at Seattle's Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound were fed up. Pharmaceutical giants Merck and Pfizer wouldn't meet the managed care organization's demanded discounts, so the plan refused to [...]

A 1993 survey showed that 10% more hospitals are contracting out their data processing, food service, physical therapy and other services. Most hospitals were pleased with the service they are receiving; 58% of hospitals plan to renew their current contracts and only a small percentage expressed dissatisfaction. Good communication and clear expectations are the key to successful contracting. In addition, hospitals should make sure that they are philosophically compatible with a contracting company before they sign a contract., Access to specialized expertise and the ability to staff hard-to-fill jobs continue to surpass all other reasons for hospitals' use of contract management services, according to an annual CEO survey [...]

Yolanda Garcia remembers the Melrose of her childhood as a beautiful neighborhood in New York City's South Bronx. Thirty-five years later, Melrose is littered with gutted buildings, vacant lots and [...]

Marvin Feldman learned a lesson about formulary management six years ago as director of pharmacy at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, a teaching institution in Boston. Because St. Elizabeth's had made great [...]

Execs see primary care construction as key to successful networks Virtually everyone agrees that primary care will enjoy the next building boom in health care, but experts differ on the [...]

Choosing one's health care has gotten to be like shopping for a new car. More and more, consumers are giving the same scrutiny to treatment options as they do to [...]

The 82-year-old nursing home resident just turned away whenever her family visited, refusing to leave her bed or talk to them. Finally, facility staff turned to an intensive partial hospitalization [...]

A high school basketball player in rural Washington state was recently rushed to a local ED. The emergency: not a head injury or broken leg, but a blister on his [...]

Tom Scaletta knew the routine only too well: An intoxicated man brought into the emergency department at San Francisco General Hospital was lashing out at doctors and nurses. Scaletta, an [...]

Is the glass half full or half empty? That's what mental health care providers are asking themselves in the face of national health care reform. Accustomed to being overlooked by [...]

Danielle Fahrner cares more about toys than managed care. But thanks to the organ transplant program of United Resource Networks, Danielle, on her third birthday, go the best present of [...]

The infectious disease clinic at Grady Health System in Atlanta recently paid a private ambulance company $1,500 to take and AIDS patient home to New Orleans, so that he could [...]

In 1986, Horizon Mental Health Services was hired to set up a partial hospitalization program for Preferred Provider of Flint, MI. Several of Michigan's major employers had initiated a movement [...]

After its sales of refurbished imaging equipment rose 129 percent between 1991 and 1992, Comdisco Medical Equipment Group more than doubled the size of its refurbishment facility in surban Chicago. [...]

Imagine receiving a phone call from the president of your state hospital association, asking you to collaborate with three of your biggest competitors. Yet that's exactly what Bill Yates, president [...]

As biotechnology drugs move out of the realm of science fiction and into reality, the changing role of hospital pharmacists as clinical decision makers may be the least difficult in [...]

Constant changes in the health care field have made strategic and facilities planning a continuous and ever-evolving activity. But how concrete can a facilities plan be when its development is [...]

In years marked by tight resources and competing requests, hospitals have struggled to take the internal politics out of technology planning. But those struggles often take on new dimensions as [...]

Two US hospitals are testing a wireless, two-way communications system to replace the hospital intercom. Each individual using the system wears a lapel microphone and belt pack. The Voice-Call System, adapted from units used in fast-food restaurants, promotes greater quiet in the hospital, lets nurses concentrate on their work and allows a faster response time for medical staff., Quieter hallways and improved staff communication are among the benefits attributed to wireless two-way communications systems being tested at RushPresbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, Chicago, and Erlanger Medical Center, Chattanooga, TN. [...]

There's trouble at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center: For the first time since the Chicago complex started its geriatric rehabilitation program, admissions have declined. From April to September of this year, [...]

Treatment plans for breast cancer typically call for daily visits to a radiation oncologist over a sixweek period. Yet oncologist Peter Hulick, M.D., recently received a referral that authorized fewer [...]

Depending on who you talk to, the recent consolidation in the pharmaceutical industry is either good new or bad news for health care providers. Chances are, it's a bit of [...]

By the time I pay for the implant, there's no money left to care for the patient, including doing the implantation procedure itself.' Sound familiar? A recent study confims that [...]

Much of what patients know about personal health concerns is peppered with old wives' tales and anecdotes from family and friends. Yet patient involvement in clinical decision making necessitates that [...]

When a urologist at Philadelphia's Frankford Hospital asked the administration to buy a laser for transurethral resections of the prostate, he may have gotten more than he bargained for: a [...]

Raechell Jagow weighed only 79 pounds when she was admitted to Sioux Valley Hospital last Easter. Two physicians, believing that Raechell's mother was starving her, planned to get a court [...]

It's 7:30 a.m., and pharmacist Rebecca Finley has begun making rounds to 15 patients with the rest of the clinical team at the University of Maryland Cancer Center. When rounds [...]

Rockford (IL) Health System has taken a giant step closer to becoming an integrated delivery system, thanks to the innovative negotiations that took place over four days in April, when [...]

A study published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine has documented what many in health care already know: Patients with acure pain receive inadequate medication. In the sample [...]

How can a hospital reach the broadest possible audience in its community in one fell swoops? For St. Patrick Hospital, Missouls, MT, the local newspaper provided the answer--and the forum [...]

Hospital pharmacies have made great strides in cost reduction and appropriate use of products through formularies, drug-use evaluations, and pharmacy and therapeutics committees. Now, some hospitals are applying drug formulary [...]

It's a fact: as integrated health networks develop, their purchasing power is enhanced. Combined with already low price differentiation among suppliers, that fact is leading some in health care to [...]

Subacute care appears to be gaining a distinct place along the continuum of care, but that advance isn't coming without growing pains. A recent survey by the Moore Group, Washington, [...]

Preventive care. Improved throughput. Cost-effectiveness. Enhanced radiopharmaceuticals. Expanding awareness of benefits by referring physicians. Whatever the reason, diagnostic nuclear imaging is on the rise--both in equipment sales and the number [...]

You can barely understand what Elizabeth Sommers Strevey is saying these days, but that's the point. Strevey, senior vice president for regulatory and professional affairs at the Greater New York [...]

A long-standing feud in Manchester, NH, came to an end in 1990, when Elliot Hospital and Catholic Medical Center acknowledged that they could better solve the community's health care problems [...]

With the might of 94 hospitals in 18 states, England and Switzerland behind it, Columbia Healthcare Corp. is flexing its muscles as a purchasing megapower. Using increased leverage, Columbia is [...]

One-stop shopping is how one director describes the decentralized service centers that provide equipment, supplies, pharmaceuticals, linens and transportation to patient units at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN. And [...]

Serving the public with well-prepared nurses while ministering to the private needs of employees who want to initiate or further their nursing careers. That's what the Ladders in Nursing Careers [...]

Subacute care is emerging so quickly that no one knows exactly how many such units exist nationwide. And even though two associations recently formed to serve the field, there is [...]

Debate over the disposal of radioactive waste has put the state of Michigan in the kind of predicament that hospitals nationwide may face a year from now. Next July 1, [...]

A robot was used to drill a hole in the femur cavity of 10 patients who underwent total hip-replacement surgery at Sutter General Hospital in Sacramento, CA. Researchers are preparing to expand the experiment to a full-scale, multi-center clinical trial. The Robodoc robot allowed doctors to create a tight fit between the bone and the implant, encouraging the bone to grow into the porous material of the implant. The robot represents a cost savings for the hospital because it eliminates the expense of replacing failed implants., A 7-foot-tall robot recently completed a trial run as a surgical assistant at Sutter General Hospital, Sacramento, CA. If that experience is any indication, according to Sutter surgeons, the robot's [...]