Articles Tagged: University of Iowa Health Care

$300K spent on failed search could go toward another

The UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital is considering installing a NICU camera system allowing families of intensive care infants to do watch livestreams of their babies stretching and arching and blinking or just sleeping.

Typifying the gap separating the union representing thousands of University of Iowa Health Care workers and their governing Board of Regents, union representatives Wednesday opened contract negotiations with a 25-page proposal including a 14-percent raise while regents offered a 1.5- to 3-percent raise on a single page.

By 2025, University of Iowa Health Care expects to have a new primary care location up and running in southeast Iowa City – addressing a “health care access gap” in that part of town.

A Le Claire mother is suing the state, accusing University of Iowa physicians of perforating her bowel and charring her rectum during a surgical procedure – leaving her permanently impaired and unable to care for her two sons to the same degree she was pre-surgery.

“That's a whole different level of stress on an already stressful situation,” University of Iowa Dr. Christopher Hogrefe told The Gazette, pulling from personal experience as a current assistant physician for the Chicago Cubs.

Although the University of Iowa stripped orthopedics from its second application to build a new hospital in North Liberty – after critics of the first, denied application slammed its focus on orthopedics and state officials cited the heavy orthopedics bent in its rejection – UI Health Care officials now are calling the project an “orthopedic hospital.”

Given low-dose CT scans are available and capable of detecting lung cancer early, the University of Iowa’s Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center recently joined more than 50 top cancer organizations in urging providers and insurers to improve access to and more frequently use lung cancer screening tools for those at high risk.

“The world has changed a lot in the last two and a half years, and the ways that we're trying to protect health care workers, and society as a whole, are different, too,” said study co-principal investigator Nicholas Mohr, UI professor of emergency medicine, anesthesia and epidemiology.

After the University of Iowa’s chosen finalist in October declined an offer to succeed Brooks Jackson as vice president for medical affairs of UI Health Care and dean of its Carver College of Medicine, the campus is relaunching its search for a new head of its sprawling health care enterprise.

Over a budget year in which Mercy Iowa City sought a new managing partner, entertained a takeover offer from University of Iowa Health Care, and tried to climb back from tens of millions in pandemic-incurred losses, new documents made public last week show finances for the Iowa City-based hospital only worsened.

Adding to the growing list of construction and renovation projects University of Iowa Health Care is pursuing in and around its campus, UIHC now is asking an outside development team to design, plan and build it a new primary care medical office building in Iowa City. Competing hospitals are concerned, saying primary care needs in the area are already well-served.

Construction of a new University of Iowa inpatient tower on its main hospitals and clinics campus — first unveiled in January as part of a 10-year master plan — is expected to start just two years from now in 2025.

Speaking a different language in a health care setting can not only prevent patients from communicating aches and pains or doctors from relaying important medical news or instructions – it can keep people from seeking care altogether.

Spelling out its contention with a $12.8 million jury verdict awarded to a contractor on its Stead Family Children’s Hospital, the state – on behalf of the University of Iowa and Board of Regents – is accusing jurors of leveling “excessive” damages and of being “influenced by passion or prejudice.”