Articles Tagged: University of Iowa Health Care

Denise J. Jamieson — professor and chair for the Emory Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics and chief of gynecology and obstetrics for Emory Healthcare — will visit the UI campus Monday and Tuesday and participate in an open forum from noon to 1 p.m. Monday.

Given the uncertainty of Mercy Iowa City, Steindler now is considering performing surgery at hospitals in Cedar Rapids too – including UnityPoint Health-St. Luke’s Hospital and Mercy Medical Center, both Cedar Rapids, and other in-patient hospitals regionally.

Eight months after unveiling four finalists to become vice president for medical affairs and dean of its Carver College of Medicine --

A day after getting Board of Regents OK to proceed with $185 million worth of health care and medicine-related projects in the coming months, the University of Iowa on Friday issued a request for qualifications from firms interested in designing and developing a massive new North Inpatient Tower next to Kinnick Stadium.

One of those projects is a $40 to $49 million expansion and build-out of its six-year-old Stead Family Children’s Hospital that -- with price escalations during construction, court-ordered payouts post-construction, and faulty work requiring widespread window repair -- already has seen its price swell from a $270.8 million budget to up to $450 million.

UI agreed to implement training and pay over $16,000 to resolve claims that X-rays submitted to Medicare didn’t meet requirements of having an attending physician review them.

The union representing 3,800 University of Iowa Health Care workers has announced the ratification of its “strongest contract for our members in Iowa since the changes to Chapter 20 in 2017.”

Mercy Iowa City Hospital in recent months had to retain a “strategic and operational performance improvement” consultant after breaching debt coverage obligations amid declining patient days and occupancy percentages. Just two miles west, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is overrun with as many as 70 people waiting in the emergency room at one time.

The University of Iowa’s efforts to acknowledge and reward good work come as UI Health Care reports 500 to 600 open nursing positions, and the broader campus reports its most faculty resignations since at least 2006 — with 92 in fiscal 2022.

Compounding escalating costs associated with the University of Iowa’s construction of its 14-story Stead Family Children’s Hospital, campus officials are asking permission to spend $45 million replacing damaged windows on nine floors – tripling the $15 million they originally planned to spend replacing cracked or delaminated windows on two floors.

After two bargaining sessions and a few proposals and counter offers, the Board of Regents preemptively canceled all upcoming meetings with the union representing more than 3,800 University of Iowa Health Care workers and “declared an impasse.”

Wrapping up a medical drama that started 12 years ago in a University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics operating room, the State Appeal Board on Monday agreed to settle a 2020 lawsuit from a former employee accusing UIHC of improperly sharing details of an incident with prospective employers.

Inflation, labor costs, and supply chain issues have upped the total cost and expanded the construction timeline for a new Steindler North Liberty Ambulatory Surgery Center planned near where the University of Iowa is building its new hospital – which also recently aired substantial cost increases.

University of Iowa Health Care’s websites were back up and running Wednesday morning after an outage Tuesday knocked them down for hours. UIHC officials haven’t answered questions about when the outage started and how long the sites were down. They also haven’t answered questions about what caused the outage and whether it was the result of a cyberattack.

University of Iowa Health Care officials confirmed Tuesday afternoon their public websites are down – including those for the UI Hospitals & Clinics, UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital, and UI Carver College of Medicine.