regional medical center

Two small public hospitals are fighting tooth and nail to keep HCA out of their Tennessee service area. Williamson Medical Center and Maury Regional Medical Center have together spent over $60,000 in ads to fight HCA's certificate-of-need application for a 56-bed hospital in nearby Spring Hill. The money has gone for billboard advertising and to retain PR firms to help the effort. HCA has responded with a $44,000 marketing expenditure in support of the CON, including a color-brochure …

> Kaiser Permanente's top official in Northern California apologized for problems at the HMO's kidney transplant center in San Francisco. Article

> Taking advantage of federal rules that allow tribes to set their own laws, an Indian tribe in South Dakota plans to open an abortion clinic on reservation land. …

California released comprehensive data on cardiac bypass death rates at hospitals in the state. The report is from 2003, the last year that data is available. The best performers were St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles, St. John's Regional Medical Center in Oxnard and UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. Interestingly, the four worst performing hospitals were all once owned by Tenet healthcare, which has since sold three of the facilities in question. The state plans to release a …

Following yesterday's news that a CPOE system from Cerner was tied to an increase in patient mortality rates, there was more bad news for electronic medical record vendors today. Arizona-based Navapache Regional Medical Center said it will not continue a trial of the Emergisoft EMR it started last December in its emergency department. The hospital is going back to scanning paper records. That, the hospital says, is as electronic as it wants to be for now. "Emergisoft's weak point was its …

> Dark days at Humana, as the health plan's third-quarter profit plunged 41 percent. Article (Wall Street Journal sub. req.)

> With many local doctor's offices closed a week after Hurricane Wilma, emergency rooms in South Florida are jammed. Article

> PBS airs Rx for …

A spokesman for Tenet Healthcare said a report carried by the Associated Press and on the front page of this morning's New York Times concerning 45 bodies found on the flooded grounds of Memorial Hospital in New Orleans is inaccurate. The AP quoted hospital officials as saying the bodies were those of patients who may have drowned after staff evacuated the hospital. "No living patient was left behind," Tenet spokesman Larry Anderson said. "We evacuated every living …

> Wall Street worries that both Tenet and HCA are at risk from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Shares in both companies have fallen slightly in morning trading. Story

> More on the Kaiser Family Foundation study about the perils of being uninsured in America. …

> The Washington Post examines one of the trial Chronic Care Improvement Programs for Medicare run by American Healthways in Maryland, which uses nurse telephonists to provide care to the chronically ill. Story

> A pregnant mother who was dying of cancer and was kept alive to try to save her baby had a successful C-section yesterday. The 1 lb., 13 oz. baby appears to …

The media continues to demonstrate considerable interest in the idea of patient blogs, a story which officially surfaced last month when High Point Regional Medical Center announced it will allow a group of patients to blog about their experiences at the hospital. Today's Wall Street Journal profiles Amy Tenderich, who runs diabetesmine.com, a blog for diabetes patients. The paper also interviews critics who warn blogs could become a serious headache for providers. …