A Big Okay for Mechanical Heart Device Program
The hospital's program for "mechanical circulatory devices" -- the ever-smaller and safer devices that can help end-stage heart failure patients resume their lives for ever-longer periods -- on Tuesday won a vital Joint Commission recommendation for re-certification.  |
| WELLS Center staff and "simulated patient" with UCH administrative fellow Zach Robison (far right).
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Has the Anschutz Medical Campus Become "Sim City"?
The hospital is poised to assume control of the WELLS Center, joining two School of Medicine centers and a College of Nursing lab in the burgeoning field of training health care professionals with sophisticated simulation techniques, including "human patient simulators." |
Campus Researchers Join New Front in
Battle against HIV
At the schools of Medicine and Pharmacy, researchers are working on a part of the global effort to test the value of anti-retroviral drugs that could reduce transmission of the deadly virus. |
| Anderson and his team measure minute intracellular concentrations of HIV-fighting drugs.
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Sidebar: Reasons Are Clear, the Path is Not
Pete Anderson's lab is one of only about six in the world that uses a method to measure drug buildups within the tiny confines of a human cell. Its work has become a part of the worldwide study of how to stop HIV from hijacking CD4+ T-cells. |
Difficult C-diff Infections Are Multiplying
Patients are increasingly bringing to the hospital certain "armor-coated" spores -- resistant to antimicrobial foams and gels -- that can transform in the gut to bacteria capable of causing severe intestinal problems. Infection Control is fighting back the old-fashioned way: with knowledge, soap, and water. |
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Employees terminated for privacy breaches In a dismissal made all the more "painful" because the two staff members were "long-term" employees, the hospital imposed its zero-tolerance policy for violating patient privacy. 
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UCH about to see first, tangible results of health care reform Colorado is two weeks away from joining the first states to run "high-risk insurance pools" for people who would otherwise be uninsured. For UCH and other state safety-net hospitals, it could mean as many as 4,000 more patients with insurance. But the pool is filled literally with uncharted waters.
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This Hospital Life.Commentary: the good and bad of being health care's biggest rabbit. Plus "What You Read" and an update on bus discounts.
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"Hotline" installed; fraud and abuse reports up Worried that it wasn't hearing as many reports of personnel conflicts and medical identity theft as other hospitals its size, UCH's Compliance Department launched a new fraud- reporting system last spring. The goal: ensure employee anonymity in reporting possible abuses. Initial results: a rise in the number of reports. "And that's a good thing," says Compliance chief Christine Newgren-Hogan.
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What's Nearby? Meant for patients, visitors, employees, partners and more, a new free online directory of eateries, housing, lodging, shopping and more on and near campus debuted on August 6.
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Our Scoreboard The fiscal year-end scores are in. They tell us how well we did in quality outcomes, patient satisfaction and other ways we compete with ourselves and measure our own success. The staff beat last year's baseline in nine of the 12 "critical success factors," but fell short of several goals. Plus: New measures for the current fiscal year.
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You can do anything, but fill up all those blue-top tubes Blood samples that fall a few millimeters short of filling 70 percent of a blue-topped lab tube are causing slowdowns in the Clinical Lab and throughout the hospital. Kelly Michels (above) is trying to speed it up with... poetry.
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Making UCH managers better On the theory that being a good manager does not come naturally to many people, HR offers a class -- and continuing education -- to orient supervisors new to the hospital or to managing the UCH way. It's just part of a bigger effort to keep managers improving.
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UCH in the News Health reform challenge; filling a dental need; stretching Parkinson's care; more. Mentions: Tracey Anderson; Mark Earnest; James Grigsby; James Jack; Olga Klepitskaya; Stephen Malkoski; Strode Weaver.
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Around UCH Our regular round-up of goings-on, big and small, in and around the hospital. This issue: donated items for tots and moms (left); Liver Life Walk success; School at Work on the way; more.
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