Medical copter hits hospital; 2 hurt

From CNN.com
A medical helicopter practicing approaches crashed on the roof of a hospital Thursday, catching fire moments after the two people on board escaped with minor injuries, a fire official said.
The pilot and passenger were in stable condition, said Richard Breon, president and CEO of Spectrum Health.
No patients were aboard the chopper, which crashed [...]

Proposed EMTALA Regulation Changes to Affect On-Call Programs

The CMS EMTALA Technical Advisory Group (TAG) has recommended that hospitals establish a formal “community call arrangement.” A community call plan would help to ensure compliance with EMTALA obligations, and eliminate problems with the current system wherein there is a shortage of physicians of various specialties, or where a continuous on-call obligation is often placed [...]

Consumers Union’s New Hospital Comparison Service

From the Wall Street Journal:
The nonprofit Consumers Union is launching a new hospital-ratings service, adding to the growing competition to provide online consumer information about health care.
The Consumer Reports online hospital service will include around 3,000 facilities. Consumers will be able to see a graph showing how intensely each hospital tends to treat patients, on [...]

Child Health

From US Today:
(Point of Pride: Iowa is #1!)
Only 46% of kids visit the doctor and dentist at least once a year in Idaho, but 75% of Massachusetts children do. Infant mortality rates are 2.5 times higher in the District of Columbia than in Maine. And South Carolina kids are 5.7 times as likely to wind [...]

Ill. bill to limit charging of uninsured moves ahead

From Modern Healthcare (requires free subscription)
The Illinois General Assembly is poised to pass a bill that would limit what hospitals could charge and collect from eligible uninsured patients. A bill carrying an amendment dubbed the Hospital Uninsured Patient Discount Act was passed unanimously by the House and is expected to clear the Senate.
Specifically, hospitals could [...]

New Proposed EMTALA Regulations Issued By CMS

From Medlaw.com
New proposals for EMTALA rules issued April 30.

Just days after new site review guidelines went into effect in April, CMS issued proposed new regulations that would implement some recommendations of the EMTALA Technical Advisory Group (TAG) that were issued before the committee went out of existence last year. 
Among the proposals:

Move the on-call requirements of [...]

Intolerances

From Edwin Leap:
Our emergency department electronic charting system is now going to start listing as separate categories allergies and intolerances.  It makes sense, really.  How many times are we told ‘he’s allergic to Lortab…it makes him act all crazy!’  (Never mind that he might have been a wee bit crazy to begin with.)  ‘She can’t [...]

Nocturnists

From the Wall Street Journal Health Blog:
They call the overnight doctors “nocturnists,” though as far as we can tell they’re basically hospitalists who work at night. As of last year, about 1,200 hospitals had either a nocturnist or hospitalist sharing night coverage, compared with 700 hospitals in 2003, according to the Society of Hospital Medicine.

After Taser Shot, Fugitive’s Irregular Heartbeat Becomes Normal

From the Wall Street Journal Health Blog:
A 28-year-old man with a history of mental problems fled from the cops and spent 40 minutes hiding in a lake before they collared him and hauled him to the ER.
His body temperature had fallen to a chilly 89 degrees. Docs found speed and cocaine in his blood, and [...]

“We Need Free Trade in Health Care”

A Wall Street Journal Opinion Piece
Comprehensive coverage of the over 45 million uninsured today will require that they can access doctors and related medical personnel. An IOU that cannot be cashed in is worthless.
Massachusetts ran into this problem: Few doctors wanted (or were able, given widespread shortages in many specialties) to treat many of the [...]