MSHA unveils new hospital name, environmental plans
Mountain States Health Alliance, Johnson City, Tenn., has announced plans to build an environmentally friendly Franklin Woods Community Hospital. The facility, estimated to cost $122 million when completed in 2010, will replace Johnson City Specialty Hospital and North Side Hospital. The new hospital will have approximately 240,000 square feet and is to be built on a 25-acre lot adjacent to The Wellness Center inside Med Tech Park. The construction will follow guidelines of the U.S. Green Building Council and will be certified as a Leader in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) facility. It will be the first LEED-certified building in the region and one of just a handful of LEED-certified hospitals in the country.
Central line P4P program saves money, AIDS quality
Hospitals participating in the QualityBLUE program, a pay-for-performance program developed by Highmark, showed significant reductions in central-line associated bloodstream infections in the past year, the Pittsburgh-based Blue Cross and Blue Shield licensee reported. The national average is five infections per 1,000 line days for intensive care unit patients. The average hospital-wide rate for hospitals in the QualityBLUE program was only 1.5 per 1,000 line days. Reductions in cases because of higher quality treatment represents a potential savings to the healthcare system of more than $32 million, Highmark estimated.
House considers new healthcare IT bill
In a move to get healthcare information technology legislation passed before the close of this year, Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Mike Rogers (R-Mich. ) have introduced the Promotion of Health Information Technology Act. The bill promotes widespread adoption of healthcare IT and sets a date for establishing interoperability standards. It also provides grants and loans to providers, empowers public-private partnerships, and codifies aspects of the federal healthcare IT advancement effort. Eshoo said the bipartisan act will increase the deployment of healthcare IT by streamlining the process for the adoption of HIT interoperability standards. It requires the federal government to abide by those standards, and it authorizes funding to promote healthcare IT adoption nationwide. The bill also includes strong patient protections.