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Agencies upgrade UC Health bond ratings The upgrade by rating agencies S&P, Moody's and Fitch, highly unusual in today's uncertain hospital market, will save UCH and other hospitals in the system millions in interest payments. Meanwhile, a planned sale of $290 million in bonds to pay for the acquisition of Memorial Health System was "extremely successful," said UC Health CFO Anthony DeFurio, another reflection of investors' favorable view of the direction of the growing system. >>More |
A hard look in the mirror by the ED A large-scale process improvement effort underway aims to redesign the way the hospital's Emergency Department delivers care. Without fundamental changes, the new, larger ED scheduled to open next year will inevitably face the same overcrowding and delays it copes with today, says Emergency Medicine chair Richard Zane, MD (right). >>More |
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Green light for TAVR A letter from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services this month gave the hospital the go-ahead to begin recruiting patients for a nationwide trial of the latest in minimally transaortic valve replacement (TAVR) technology. The trial will compare the safety and effectiveness of the Sapien XT valve (left) and its catheter delivery system to open-heart valve replacement surgery. >>More |
Hand washing police challenge scrubbing scofflaws Ticket-wielding providers on the 12 West Medicine Unit took on one of health care's toughest challenges -- getting clinicians to wash their hands before and after they leave patients' rooms. The culture-changing effort's payoff so far: hygiene compliance rates on the unit are far higher than the hospital-wide average. Right: 12 West infection control champion Leilani Castillo, RN, shows tickets handed out to violators and to members of the clean-hands club. >>More |
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Facial laser tag Our reporter (left) thought she'd drawn a cushy assignment when she set out to review a facial treatment performed at UCH's Visage Center. Turns out the "fractional non-ablative laser treatment" was a little more challenging than she anticipated. >>More |
Unwinding addiction With a visually arresting new series of ads, UCH's Center for Dependency, Addiction and Rehabilitation (CeDAR) hopes to shed new light on the road to addiction -- and raise local awareness of its nationally respected services. >>More |
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From the fire, family In "This Hospital Life": A devastating late-night fire in August drove 8 East Rehabilitation Medicine CNA Hawa Fofana (left) and her family from their apartment. But with the help of her coworkers and other UCH staffers, Fofana is back on her feet and grateful to the colleagues who were there when she needed them most. Plus: "What You Read." >>More |
The complicated case of compliance Bad behavior by docs and hospital staff, product diversion, patient privacy violations, fraud, abuse: they can threaten the hospital financially and legally, and tarnish its reputation. Employees may be the best source for finding and stopping wrongdoing, but they haven't been using Iline, the service designed to protect those who report potential wrongdoing, as often as hospital leaders would like. >>More |
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A CU source for the newest HIV drug How do you measure a drug's effectiveness? One way is to know for sure whether or how much of it is being taken. That's a tough trick, but a CU School of Pharmacy team has perfected a method for measuring intracellular drug levels in patients. The work, led by Pete Anderson, PharmD, helped quantify the effectiveness of the first drug approved by the FDA to prevent HIV. >>More |
Around UCH Our regular roundup of goings-on, big and small, in and around the hospital. This issue: ED, hospital get big pitch (right); Eye Centers' sites for sore eyes; 16th Ave. now a road to somewhere; Wellness Center calls all losers; more. >>More
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Campus classifieds More services, products to buy or sell. Also: nearby dining and lodging. Try our new classified ad and guide to campus services section, University Health Marketplace. >>More |
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Dean Krugman's news The latest from the School of Medicine. >>More |
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The New Tower's Nervous System | |
Inside the new inpatient tower's flashy facade are now hundreds of miles of wires and cable. They'll soon carry a torrent of information from dozens of smart systems. >>Go |
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A Presidential Invocation | |
The call Todd Strickland received from the Obama campaign was a little different than most received during election season. As a result, the resident chaplain at CeDAR (above) found himself in front of thousands, delivering the invocation at the president's campaign stop in Golden this month. >>Go |
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Widening War on Prostate Cancer | | With the FDA approval Aug. 31 of Xtandi, six new prostate cancer-fighting drugs have hit the market in the past 30 months. E. David Crawford, MD, chief of Urologic Oncology at UCH (above), says the new drugs open possibilities for combination therapies and earlier treatments for men who not long ago had limited options. >>Go |
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Shortening the UCH Paper Trail | | The hospital's cavernous Smith Road warehouse is home to as many as 25,000 boxes of archived documents, some going back 80 years. Managing the steady flow of paper is the task of Frank Velasquez (above), who has made a big dent in what had been a steadily expanding box backlog. >>Go |
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UCH in the News | Physicians get an altitude adjustment; sunny study outcomes; harnessing high blood pressure; more. Mentions: Peter Anderson; Lori Crane; Becky Davis; Christopher Davis; Morgan Eutermoser; Vincent Fulginiti; Ryan Paterson; Kevin Rogers; Jean Scandlyn; Monique Spillman; Dan Theodorescu. >>Go
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