Emergency room doctor describes scene at tornado-devastated St. John’s Regional Medical Center

From CBS News:

Jonathan Elliott had heard the tornado sirens blaring outside St. John’s Regional Medical Center for about a half-hour when things suddenly took a terrifying turn.

The building started shaking, the lights began to flicker and 16-year-old Elliott could feel the wind coming up beneath the floor in his grandfather’s seventh-floor hospital room. It was time to make a move, he decided, and that’s what Elliott and his grandmother did, making a dash for the relative safety of an inside stairwell.

Up to that moment, “we had no idea it was going to blow,” Elliott said.

Bambi Rescued By the Jaws of Life

From Gizmodo:

What do you do when you find a baby deer trapped underneath a pile of rocks? Call your local firefighters, who extract the poor creature using the largest power tool they could find—the Jaws of Life.

Demand for Texas Air Transports Grow as Budgets Limit Rural Capabilities

From JEMS:

Demand for air medical transport services – an expensive but often lifesaving option – is growing as an aging baby boomer population suffers increasingly serious health problems and budget cuts limit rural medical center capabilities, experts say.

Routine ER visits drain Medicaid, DHSS says

From DelawareOnline:

About 1,500 so-called “super users” in the Delaware Medicaid program rack up $940,134 in charges each year by visiting emergency rooms more than three times for non-urgent reasons.

Gov. Jack Markell’s administration has proposed capping the number of non-urgent emergency room visits taxpayers will cover to three annually. Markell also is seeking to implement $3.65 co-pays on most of the 197,924 Medicaid recipients for visits to doctors, therapists and the emergency room for non-urgent medical problems.

Florida $100 Fee for Medicaid Patients’ Use of the ED for Routine Care

From The Sacramento Bee:

Florida wants to be the first state in the nation to charge most of its Medicaid recipients a monthly premium as well as $100 for using the ER for routine care.

Florida’s ER co-pay, which it’s estimated would generate about $9 million a year, was aimed at Medicaid recipients who use the ER for primary care even though it’s cheaper to use a doctor’s office or clinic. National studies have shown that Medicaid enrollees use the ER about three times as much as people who have private insurance do.

Springfield Hospitals Making More Room for Joplin Patients

From Ozarks First:

(Springfield, MO) — With St. John’s hospital in Joplin destroyed, hospitals here in Springfield have seen an influx of patients.

CoxHealth has taken in at least 90. St. John’s has seen more than 60. KOLR/KSFX visited both facilities today, where they’re ready to continue helping.

The incident command center at CoxHealth is buzzing — with a running tally of not only its available beds, but those that are open at other hospitals as well.  With extra staff on hand last night, dozens of patients came in for help.

Doctors Report Four Dead at Missouri Hospital

From JEMS:

A doctor has confirmed at least four people were killed at St. John’s Regional Medical Center during the tornado that tore through the Missouri hospital.

Dr. Jim Roscoe said Monday he doesn’t know if the victims there were patients or staff members. He compared the carnage to what he saw last year after the devastating earthquake in Haiti.