Health Insurance Enrollment Begins Next Week
One plan's name has changed, and the hospital has taken a big leap to try to keep future premium increases down. Otherwise, employees will find few changes when they enroll in plans May 17-28.  |
Latest Financial Report "Fantastic," but Cautions Lay Ahead
Thanks to higher volumes and ongoing fiscal discipline, the hospital set some records in March. But big budget requests and behemoth IT and building projects on tap for next year probably mean there will be no belt-loosening in the near future, leaders reported. |
"Medicare Is Run by Human Beings"
Compliance Manager Catherine Hicks (above) may not be tall, but she got CMS, the giant and supposedly impervious federal health care bureaucracy, to redefine when certain blood tests for transplant patients are "medically necessary." |
| | Jackie Lothian (left), with husband Lannie Curtis. Lothian avoided open-heart surgery in March with the help of UCH's Interventional Cardiology team and a tiny device awaiting FDA approval. |
|
Tried-and-true Open Heart Surgery or a Tiny New Valve Clip?
An Aspen patient and her cardiologist differed when considering tough choices between traditional therapies and a novel, still-limited treatment at UCH. |
Tumor versus Tumor
A Neurosurgery team is at work on a new treatment that uses tumors to treat malignant brain tumors, one of medicine's most implacable foes. The goal: "reclaim the immune system." |
| | Youngster tests a spirometer in the Pulmonary Clinic at last month's Take Your Child to Work Day. |
|
What Do Your Mom
and Dad Do?
Some pretty cool stuff, nearly 70 youngsters found at UCH's second "Take Your Child to Work Day." |
Med Students Ask Kids to Use Their Heads
With the help of residents and med school faculty, they distributed more than 90 helmets to second graders at a northwest Aurora elementary school. The goal: prevent devastating head injuries. |
UCH in the News
Pump the D; MS and mice; the truth about cholesterol; the dirty secret of germs; more. Mentions: John Carroll , James Chen, John Corboy, Robert Eckel, Adit Ginde, Thomas Flaig, Wilbur Franklin, Adam Hansgen, Fred Hirsch, Antonio Jimeno, Andy Liu, Yosef Refaeli, Diane Skiba. |
|
Build it! The Board of Directors gave surprise early approval to a $400 million expansion and what amounts to a new era for the hospital, its drive to top 10 status, the med school and, certainly not least, UCH patients. Look for a second 12-story tower, a big new ED, and more patient and staff parking by 2013. Sidebar: Getting it done on a fast track, with plenty of elevators. 
|
Hospital ready when promising prostate cancer arrived The long-awaited approval for a new and still-scarce treatment for late-stage prostate cancer hasn't caused the initial flood of inquiries the Cancer Center expected so far, but operators are standing by.
|
Another big first for UCH nurses On April 27, the hospital became one of the only two in the nation to win accreditation for a graduate nurse residency program. It marks another huge step in expanding nurses' clinical knowledge and raising their professional status, as well as making the hospital even more of a magnet for the best nurses, says JoAnn DelMonte (above).
|
Sidebar: The long journey to accreditation It started in 1998, when then-Chief Nursing Officer Colleen Goode began a national effort to create a then-unknown residency experience for nurses.
|
Inside the Insider Commentary: when the doctor's wife is the patient, the hospital's "vision" turns personal. Plus: "What You Read" and a plea for 17th Ave. pedestrian walkway.
|
As Cancer Center research grew, so did billing frustrations The tower of paper on Mary Schumer's desk (left) has gotten smaller - and researchers' access to clinical trials projects has widened - as a joint UCH/Cancer Center effort made the billing of clinical trials sponsors more efficient. It's been more than just a nice kumbayah moment. It's saved lots of dollars and frustration.
|
But who's going to run the new era in health information technology? You can buy great software, but without the 50,000 people needed nationwide to run electronic health records, "you've got a very expensive paperweight." With a new grant, CU's health sciences schools are planning to help train them.
|
Getting on top of wellness A pair of hospital staffers are taking a bottom-up approach to improving their health: summiting some of the state's famed "fourteeners." They're inviting employees to join them.
|
When the buildings need care UCH has hundreds of thousands of square feet of facilities, and managing them is a 24/7 job. Starting next Monday, there are new phone and web contacts to get things improved, moved or fixed.
|
Boosting fertility A mysterious hormonal malady is at the root of some women's infertility issues. UCH and an elite, NIH-appointed group of six other academic medical centers are working with patients to find out if a new drug can offer a better solution.
|
Around UCH Our regular round-up of goings-on, big and small, in and around the hospital. This issue: dunking leadership (left); Nightingale winner; talkin' tornadoes; Integrative Medicine in the house; more...
|
Dean Krugman's news The latest on what's going on at the School of Medicine.
|
|
