Articles Tagged: University of Iowa Health Care

The last 12 months have brought massive change across University of Iowa Health Care – from its name and brand to its expanding footprint to its leadership, with at least seven of the growing enterprise’s top administrators either joining the executive team or being invited to since Aug. 1, 2023.

For the first time in several years, the University of Iowa’s Health Care operation has made gains in the oft-touted U.S. News & World Report “best hospital” rankings, with the 2024-25 edition released this week.

Nearly three years after longtime University of Iowa Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center Director George Weiner announced plans to step down, the health care enterprise has announced his permanent replacement in Mark Burkard.

Complicating vehicle and foot traffic in and around the main University of Iowa Health Care campus and its neighboring Kinnick Stadium — beginning this summer and stretching into and through the upcoming Hawkeye football season — is construction of a new road and roundabout, creating a multifaceted utility corridor necessary for a massive new UIHC inpatient tower in the works.

Under four months after launching a search for a new head of its nationally-ranked Stead Family Children’s Hospital — a position that has seen significant turnover for the past seven years — University of Iowa Health Care this week announced Jim Leste, vice president of operations for Children’s Minnesota, has accepted an offer.

University of Iowa Health Care – undertaking more than $1 billion in new, expanded, or upgraded facility projects – wants to increase patient rates 6 percent in the upcoming budget year beginning July 1 to keep up with health care inflation, among other things.

A federal bankruptcy judge on Friday afternoon confirmed a Chapter 11 plan of liquidation for the former Mercy Iowa City hospital, despite push back from its former managing partner MercyOne — which now, under the plan, remains exposed to future lawsuits.

Years after first initiating a plan to expand its maternity services — which delivered nearly 3,000 babies in 2023 — University of Iowa Health Care next week will seek Board of Regents permission to pursue a $74 million, 30,000-square-foot renovation for expanded labor, delivery, and postpartum patient care.

In the face of objections from MercyOne — the Des Moines area health care system that for six years provided management over a troubled Mercy Iowa City — a federal judge is leaning toward approving a long-negotiated liquidation plan for the now-bankrupt community hospital that exposes MercyOne to liability and lawsuits.

One week after a large California investment firm bought ACT Inc. – morphing the longtime Iowa City-based nonprofit testing company into a for-profit enterprise – a separate nonprofit organization the new ACT conglomerate promised to maintain retained the Iowa City campus and now is selling it.

Seven years after a Cedar Rapids-based contractor first started feuding with the University of Iowa over its work on the towering Stead Family Children’s Hospital, Iowa’s high court has weighed in and sided with the university on part of its appeal — reversing an order to pay Modern Piping another $12.8 million.

Among $2-plus billion in upcoming University of Iowa Health Care construction -- including a $1 billion, 842,000-square-foot inpatient tower near Kinnick Stadium -- is an expanded burn treatment center, now facing a 10-percent budget hike due to the “challenging and complex nature” of hospital renovation work.

With more sophisticated and more expensive drugs advancing every year, the annual sum Ostrem’s work saves patients continues to climb, nearly 38 years after she started.

Hoping to address UI employment demands alongside academic needs for its students-in-training, UIHC recently partnered with the College of Nursing for what could serve as a “win-win-win.” By hiring students for a new “unit partner” position, the university aims to give them “invaluable experience while also supporting the workload of hospital staff and enhancing patient care.”

Although Theresa Sault-Brill sought $95,000 from the university to remedy what she characterized as “significant lost wages” and “emotional distress,” she signed a $20,000 settlement March 28 and agreed not to pursue or accept any future UI employment.