Vanessa Miller

Although the common and highly-contagious RSV – short for “respiratory syncytial virus” – runs a mild, cold-like course for most people, it can hit infants and patients over 60 hard, even requiring hospitalization. For the first time, a vaccine is how available for those high-risk groups – thanks, in part, to University of Iowa Health Care trial work.

PinSeekers, which opened last week in Tiffin, is a year-round hybrid-golf and entertainment facility. It uses TopTracer technology, which offers advanced golf ball-tracking tools.

With a bankrupt Mercy Iowa City already inciting objections to the more than $1 million it's accrued in attorney fees tied to Chapter 11 proceedings, the hospital’s interim management and restructuring firm last week submitted another $1 million bill.

Despite warnings of a looming enrollment cliff threatening to decimate crops of high school graduates feeding thousands of colleges nationally, Iowa’s high school graduate numbers aren’t expected to dip below 2019 levels any time soon — at least through 2036.

Despite uncharacteristic discord on the Board of Regents over a list of diversity, equity, and inclusion recommendations, the board on Thursday approved the suggestions and asked the universities to produce progress reports and implementation plans by April.

Since University of Iowa Health Care more than two years ago initiated efforts to take over Mercy Iowa City, an outside Chicago-based law firm has billed it $1.8 million for “transactional and regulatory assistance arising in connection with a potential affiliation involving Mercy Iowa City.”

But the University of Iowa is the only state campus where tuition income beat expectations in fiscal 2023.

When Bradley Haws takes the reins as University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics CEO on Nov. 29 -- following a stint as UIHC chief financial officer two years ago -- he’ll make a $1.1 million starting salary, with the chance for $385,000 more in incentive pay.

Continuing its local and regional explosion in growth – including a pending $28 million purchase of Mercy Iowa City – the University of Iowa next week will ask Board of Regents permission to move forward with another $36.5 million in health care-related construction, including a $17.5 million “new road” paving the way for a $1 billion inpatient tower.

Iowa State University’s Catt Hall -- honoring the women’s suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt, accused by some of holding racist views -- will permanently retain its name after an ISU name-removal committee voted 11-4 to keep it.

Although Mercy Iowa City – given its pending sale to the University of Iowa – now has more resources to pay all the attorneys and restructuring agents it hired to navigate its bankruptcy, a U.S. trustee has objected to fees for one law firm, arguing the amount “shocks the conscience.”

Nearly two years after first bringing to the Board of Regents its intentions to renovate the nearly 50-year-old Duane Banks Baseball Stadium, University of Iowa this week released renderings and details not shared before -- including its plans to double the stadium’s size and construct a new and larger “seating bowl.”

A Board of Regents “DEI study group” – having spent six months reviewing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across Iowa’s public universities following Legislative criticism – has pitched 10 recommendations of new policies and actions the campuses can take, including one ensuring no student, employee, applicant, or campus visitor is compelled to disclose their pronouns.

In a return paired with a side of reconnection, former University of Iowa Health Care Chief Financial Officer Bradley Haws — who left two years ago for the CFO post at Emory Healthcare — has been chosen to come back as UI Hospitals & Clinics CEO, a role vacated by Suresh Gunasekaran in early 2022.

With little debate or discord — after months of twists and turns and objections — a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge on Monday approved the sale of Iowa City’s only community hospital Mercy Iowa City to the University of Iowa for $28 million.