|
The Nebraska Hospital Association's annual Advocacy Day is scheduled for Wednesday, March 5, at the Cornhusker
Marriott Hotel in Lincoln. This half-day workshop will provide hospital CEOs,
advocacy team members, trustees, key hospital staff and other health care
advocates with important information about state legislative issues. Scheduled speakers include Speaker of the Legislature Sen. Mike Flood (Norfolk);
Sen. Deb Fischer (Valentine); Scot Adams, Nebraska Health and Human Services director of division of Behavioral
Health; NHA President, Laura J. Redoutey, FACHE; Bruce Rieker, NHA vice
president of advocacy; and Carly Runestad, NHA director of health policy. The
2007 Advocacy Team of the Year will also be recognized for their grassroots advocacy efforts.
Following the morning's educational programming, you will have an
opportunity to educate your senator about how legislation will affect health
care in your community at a Legislative Luncheon. Registration is $30 per
person. To register online for Advocacy Day,
click here.
Sponsorships available — In 2007,
the Advocacy Day luncheon was attended by more than 150 from across the state, including 28 senators. If you
are interested in sponsoring Advocacy Day,
contact Bruce Rieker, vice president of advocacy at
brieker@nhanet.org or 402/742-8146.
The Nebraska Hospital Association (NHA) is developing the 2008-09 Health Care Resource Directory and would appreciate your participation as an advertiser. When you advertise in NHA publications, your message is seen by hospital administrators, physicians, nurses,
key hospital staff, trustees, state and federal legislators, health care affiliates and allied groups throughout Nebraska.
The directory will not only contain a complete listing of all Nebraska hospitals and health systems and key hospital contacts, but also a variety of useful data, reports and reference information.
The NHA Health Care Resource Directory will be used every day, all year by the people you want to reach. Don’t miss out on this opportunity for long-lasting visibility. The deadline for advertising is quickly approaching to meet our March 2008 delivery date. Please reply to NHA by
February 8, 2008. For more information, or to advertise in the Resource
Directory, contact Heather Bullock, marketing and events coordinator, at
402/742-8148 or hbullock@nhanet.org.
(Norfolk Daily News) – In his 14 years as chancellor of the
University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Dr. Harold Maurer has never had
representatives of a community come and ask him to establish a school in their
town. So he admits to being surprised when state Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk and
a contingent of Northeast Nebraskans approached him and the University of
Nebraska Board of Regents with the idea of bringing a nursing school to Norfolk
- as a partnership with Northeast Community College. A formal feasibility study
showed there is a need for nurses in northeast Nebraska and that the region
could support a nursing school. Maurer said: "The average person over the age of
65 has three chronic conditions. Nursing care is critical for those people." A
not-so-obvious benefit is the economic impact the school will have on Northeast
Nebraska. By the time the school is fully staffed, the 14 faculty will earn $1
million annually. In addition, according to the feasibility study, every three
jobs created in health care will lead to another job created in another area.
According to the study, another 3,000 jobs tied to health care could be created
in Madison County alone.
— Nebraska Chamber of Commerce Daily Update, February 4, 2008.
Bellevue's new hospital remains on track to open in about two
years along the busy Nebraska Highway 370 corridor. Construction started about a
year ago with crews focusing on completing the foundation of the Bellevue
Medical Center.
The hospital project is a collaboration involving The Nebraska
Medical Center, UNMC Physicians and a group of private-practice doctors in
Bellevue. By June, structural steel will start rising from the site at the
southwest corner of Highway 370 and 25th Street.
The hospital will have five levels and 270,000 square feet and
will be built so that additional floors could be constructed later, said John
Lehning, director of construction. The hospital initially will have between 55
and 60 beds. For patients, the project means another hospital choice. Alegent
Health's Midlands Hospital is about six miles west at Highway 370 and 84th
Street in Papillion.
The Nebraska Medical Center says the new hospital will fill a
gap in patient care in southeastern Nebraska and southwestern Iowa. A project
official has said the new hospital is expected to draw from such communities as
Glenwood, Iowa, and Nebraska City, along with Papillion and other parts of Sarpy
County.
Services will include emergency care, intensive care, labor
and delivery, inpatient and outpatient surgery, radiology and lab testing.
— Michael O'Connor, Omaha World Herald, February 5, 2008.
LINCOLN, Neb. – Leaders of several nonprofit associations
gathered Thursday at the Embassy Suites in Lincoln for the Association of
Nonprofit Executives' 2007 ANPE Nonprofit Executive of Year Award
Luncheon. The event was hosted by Rod Fowler, news anchor for Lincoln's KLKN-TV,
and featured guest speaker John Maher, publisher of the Lincoln Journal Star.
Maher recognized the important roles that all nonprofit associations play.
"The work you do is critically important, " he said. "Our society could not
function without the efforts of the free press and it could not function
without the people in this room."
Maher also offered some advice for nonprofit
leaders:
- Be clear about your organization's purpose, mission and
the constituents you serve;
- Be efficient in how you achieve your mission; and
- Recognize that your members and business partners' needs
changes as rapidly as your own.
The Nonprofit Executive of the Year Award was granted to
Robert Downey, executive director of the Capital Human Society. Downey has led
the humane society for 24 years. Other nominees that were recognized at the
luncheon include, Phyllis Ericson, CEO of Lincoln's Community Blood Bank,
and Rev. Thomas Barber, executive director of Lincoln's People's City Mission.
Past winners include Johnathon Krutz, former Nebraska Hospice and Palliative
Care Partnership executive director, and Susan Scott, former director of the
Lincoln YWCA. For more information about the Association of Nonprofit Executives
call 402/744-8446.
Hospital emergency departments treated scores of people injured
by violent storms and tornadoes Tuesday night in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky
and Tennessee. The weather caused significant damage to Stone County Medical
Center in Mountain View, AR, and cut off power to Muhlenberg Community Hospital
in Greenville, KY. Overall damage and number of storm-related deaths was
greatest in Tennessee, where hospitals escaped any serious damage and continue
to help with the relief effort, said Craig Becker, Tennessee Hospital
Association president and CEO. “We have been coordinating with our members to
make sure hospitals in the affected areas, many of them too small to handle the
volume we’ve seen in the last 24 hours, have all they need to provide medical
treatment.”
— AHA News Now, February 6, 2008.
About half of all growth in U.S. health care spending over the past several
decades was associated with technological advances in medicine, the
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concludes in a new
report.
The report defines technological advances as changes in clinical practice that
enhance the ability of providers to diagnose, treat or prevent health problems.
It says a greater emphasis on evidence-based delivery of health care might lower
future spending levels, but would probably require public and private insurers
to incorporate the results of comparative effectiveness analysis into their
coverage and payment policies. “Such actions are likely to be difficult to
implement and might prove controversial among both providers and patients,” the
report adds.
— AHA News Now, February 6, 2008.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will open its first in-store medical clinics under its own
brand name after leasing space in dozens of stores to outside companies that
operate the convenience-care clinics. Wal-Mart will open "The Clinic at
Wal-Mart" as a joint venture with local hospital systems in Atlanta, Dallas and
Little Rock, Ark., beginning in April 2008.
Read the full story.
—
AP/Yahoo News, February 7, 2008.
KEARNEY, Neb. — Data Advantage Corporation, a health care information firm, named Good
Samaritan Hospital one of the region’s 100 lowest charge providers.
“We are very pleased to receive this national recognition for our work to keep
health care costs reasonable for our community and patients,” said George Harms,
Good Samaritan Hospital’s chief financial officer. “We’ve made great strides in
finding ways to reduce unnecessary expenses, while maintaining very high quality
of care.”
“We haven’t raised our rates for most hospital services for three years. When
you consider that health care costs have increased between 6.2 percent and 8.7
percent every year since 2002, you can see how this results in real savings for
Good Samaritan’s patients,” Harms said.
Read more.
OMAHA, Neb. — Children’s Hospital has become one of the first medical centers in
the country to test and implement the next generation of computers created
specifically for use in health care. It’s called the Motion C5 Mobile Clinical
Assistant, a handheld tablet packed with the brains and power of a stationary
computer, but lightweight and durable enough to carry from bedside to bedside.
“The Motion C5 offers ultra mobility along with a variety of features ranging
from an integrated bar code reader to a microphone for dictation and a built-in
camera,” explained Allana Cummings, vice president and chief information
officer, Children’s Hospital. “As soon as we began testing the technology, we
received positive feedback from our care teams and noticed a more efficient
workflow.”
Children’s Hospital embarked on this project as a co-innovation partner with
Motion Computing, the creator of the C5 Mobile Clinical Assistant. One
objective, to ensure the PC was fully compatible with the advanced technology of
other Children’s systems including the Eclipsys Sunrise Medication Manager, an
electronic medical record used to track and consolidate patient data and
medication orders.
Read more.
OMAHA, Neb. — The Nebraska Medical Center is the only hospital in
Nebraska and in the region to be awarded a three-year term of accreditation in
radiation oncology services as a result of a recent survey by the American
College of Radiology (ACR). The ACR is a national organization serving more than
32,000 diagnostic-interventional radiologists, radiation oncologists, and
nuclear medicine and medical physicists with programs focusing on the practice
of medical imaging and radiation oncology and the delivery of comprehensive
health care services.
Read more.
OMAHA, Neb. — Creighton University Medical Center (CUMC) hospital
will train other hospitals from across the nation on a federal program called
TeamSTEPPS. TeamSTEPPS was created by the Department of Defense to reduce
preventable deadly medical errors. Teams from the Mayo Clinic, Health Care Excel
of Kentucky, CIMRO of Nebraska, Lumetra are taking part in a two and a half day
training session.
About 500 people die every week due to medical error. Creighton
University Medical Center has been on the frontline of combating this problem.
After learning about crew resource management (CRM) program used by United
States Air Force pilots, CUMC started investigating ways to use crew resource
management in its operating room. The program TeamSTEPPS stands for Team
Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety.
Read
more.
(AHA Special Bulletin) President Bush this week unveiled a fiscal year (FY) 2009
federal budget proposal that would cut an unprecedented $182 billion from
Medicare over the next five years, and $17 billion from Medicaid.
The budget would freeze Medicare updates for inpatient and outpatient services,
inpatient rehab facilities and long-term care hospitals from 2009-2011, with
updates of market-basket minus 0.65 percent each year thereafter. In addition,
indirect medical education (IME) payments to hospitals for Medicare Advantage
beneficiaries would be eliminated; the IME adjustment would be reduced from 5.5
percent to 2.2 percent over three years; hospital capital payments would be
reduced by 5 percent in FY 2009; and hospital disproportionate share payments
would be reduced by 30 percent over two years. The proposal also would establish
a value-based purchasing program that would result in an overall cut to
hospitals; lower the base payment rates for inpatient rehab hospitals for five
post-acute conditions; and eliminate payment for so-called "never events." A
detailed breakdown of the president's Medicare and Medicaid proposals is
available at
http://www.statenewsfeed.com/anemail/content/Scan001.PDF.
— AHA, February 4, 2008.
CHICAGO — The American Health Information Management Association
(AHIMA) recently launched a
national campaign to heighten awareness and educate health care consumers on the
importance of improving the management of their health information with personal
health records (PHRs). The campaign - designated "It's HI Time, America!" - encourages
Americans to create and maintain comprehensive PHRs that contain the information
needed to make important medical decisions. AHIMA will direct its message to
caregivers, maturing adults, parents raising children and individuals managing
chronic conditions.
Read the full article.
— Healthcare IT News, January 28, 2008.
(DHHS) — The need for language access services in Nebraska’s health care system
(as in all sectors) is
driven by the quantitative reality, as revealed in the U.S. Census Bureau data,
that our state’s
foreign-born population is growing at an exponential rate – faster than 43 of
the other 49 states.
The Nebraska Department of Education in 2007 reports 76 languages spoken in
Omaha public
schools and 48 in Lincoln public schools.
Until now, no known study in Nebraska has explored the landscape of language access in
a systematic
fashion from the point of view of the people on the ground providing the
language services. A report, "Interpreters Speak Out," released last
week by the
Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)
Division of Public Health and the College of Saint Mary
Center for Transcultural Learning Office of Minority Health and Health Equity,
highlights findings from interpreter survey data to help facilitate safe, quality health care
services to all persons regardless
of national origin and language. To read a copy of the report,
click
here.
Improving Patient Safety and Quality of Care Using CRM Skills
Webinar
February 28, 2008
Memorial Health Care Systems "Getting to the Heart of the Matter" Lunch and
Learn
February 29, 2008 – Seward, NE
Making the Transition to Management Webinar
March 4, 2008
NHA Advocacy Day
March 5, 2008 – Cornhusker Marriott Hotel, Lincoln, NE
Center for Biopreparedness Education Hospital Incident Command Center Instructor
Training
March 6-7, 2008 – Embassy Suites, Lincoln, NE
Nebraska Hospice and Palliative Care Partnership “Living a Good Life...at the
End of Life” Annual Conference
April 1-3, 2008 – Embassy Suites, Lincoln, NE
Memorial Health Care Systems Annual Health Fair, Seward, NE
April 2, 2008
Click here for a list
of upcoming NHA audioconferences and webinars.
Visit the
Events page on the NHA Web site for more information on any of the events.
If you have an event you would like listed in Newslink or on the NHA Web site,
submit it to Heather Bullock, marketing and events coordinator, at
hbullock@nhanet.org. Send news items to Christy Rasmussen, director of
communications, at crasmussen@nhanet.org.
NHA Newslink is published by the Nebraska
Hospital Association, 3255 Salt Creek Circle, Suite 100, Lincoln, NE 68504-4761.
Phone 402/742-8140, Fax 402/742-8191. Contact Christy Rasmussen, director of
communications, at 402/742-8151, or email,
crasmussen@nhanet.org.
Click here to
Subscribe to Newslink
Click
here to Unsubscribe
Click here to change your email address
or call Vicky Pfeiffer, administrative assistant, at 402/742-8145.
Please include the individual's name, title and email address.
Back To Main
|
