Patient Care

On a trip to Washington last summer, Melissa Brown and her family were strolling through Arlington National Cemetery when politics and the national health-care debate came up. "Mom, do you know Pennsylvania's congressional delegation has no women?," Brown said her daughter Heather, then an intern with the Feminist Majority Foundation, asked. "I left the walk wondering if it would be a viable option to run for Congress, knowing women needed more representation," Brown said.

A freeholder-sponsored citizens' committee yesterday challenged recent assertions by two Camden County Democratic freeholders and the party organization that the quality of patient care at the county's Lakeland psychiatric hospital is poor. Reginald C. Stevenson, chairman of the committee, said in an interview that physicians who served on the panel "felt very, very good about the quality of care" at Lakeland. That assessment was included in a report the committee submitted to the freeholders three weeks ago, but there has been no sign that the freeholders have reviewed the report or plan to take any action on it, Stevenson said.

The patient says he has been suffering from more asthma attacks, so a natural question is: Has he been faithfully taking his daily medicine? In another era, physicians would have to rely solely on the patient or the parent for that kind of information. Increasingly, these days they also can see on a computer screen if the pharmacy has provided a refill. That is the promise behind electronic medical records, which are becoming the norm in hospitals nationwide at the urging of the federal government.

Venting anger over the state's decision to close Haverford State Hospital and expressing concern for the 255 patients, about 50 employees and union members staged a demonstration yesterday outside the 239-acre campus. A petition to be sent to Gov. Ridge accuses the state of being "more concerned about the bottom line than providing quality patient care for Pennsylvania's most vulnerable citizens. " The state Department of Public Welfare, citing a declining patient population and rising costs, announced last month that the psychiatric hospital, which employs about 450 people, will close at the end of June.

The union that represents more than 300 nurses at Rancocas Hospital is asking for state and national reviews of the facility. The hospital is "a hellhole for employees and now, we fear, a dangerous place for patients," union representatives said yesterday. They are seeking an injunction from the National Labor Relations Board to stop the latest round of layoffs at the hospital. Losing more employees, the union says, will exacerbate problems with staffing levels and jeopardize patient care.

In a national battle of health titans, the American Medical Association is declaring war on the country's biggest managed-care insurer. The AMA on Tuesday released a blistering 11-page letter it sent Aetna U.S. Healthcare, accusing the Blue Bell company of interfering with doctors' decisions and compromising patient care. The trade group contended that the insurer was using its size to bully doctors into accepting one-sided contracts that prevent them from criticizing the health plan and from discussing treatment options not covered by the company.

State health officials halted all admissions and surgical procedures at the Memorial Hospital of Salem County yesterday after inspections found problems with patient care and infection control. Patients can still be treated in Salem Memorial's emergency room under the state order, but they will have to be taken to other hospitals in the area for further treatment. Those already admitted at the hospital are not affected by the decision. The Department of Health and Senior Services notified the hospital's president and chief executive officer, Denise R. Williams, in a letter dated Feb. 27 that regularly scheduled inspections over the last two weeks had found "significant violations" across a wide range of services.

Do Strikes Kill? That is the provocative title of a study released last month that examined the quality of care in New York hospitals during 50 nursing strikes over two decades. The answer appeared to be yes. The authors, an MIT professor working with a Carnegie Mellon University student, found that in-hospital deaths rose by 19.4 percent and readmissions by 6.5 percent for patients treated during strikes. "This study provides some of the first analytical evidence on the effects of health-care strikes on patients, and suggests that hospitals functioning during nurses' strikes are doing so at a lower quality of patient care," the authors wrote in a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

For years, as hospitals cut costs to survive ever-increasing financial pressures, nurses argued that inadequate staffing harms patients. California's controversial and, so far, unique response was to mandate minimum nurse-to-patient ratios, which, if applied locally, would prevent 222 surgical deaths annually in New Jersey and 264 in Pennsylvania, researchers here calculated in 2010. Now members of that same University of Pennsylvania team say they have figured out a key reason for that.

Hospital workers marched outside Hahnemann University Hospital yesterday. The demonstrators protested planned staff cuts that they said would destroy employee morale and undermine patient care.

Lorraine Appiott, 83, a psychiatric nurse and advocate for her patients who wrote critically about her experiences in the mental-health system, died Sunday, March 17, of lung cancer in the hospice unit at Holy Redeemer Hospital. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Mrs. Appiott graduated from Frankford Girls High School in 1948. She studied piano and played as a concert pianist, earning a scholarship that enabled her to study nursing. She graduated from Frankford Hospital School of Nursing in 1951.

When court skills stood tallest After close to 60 years, Hal Lear's No. 6 jersey at last has been retired by Temple University. The 5-foot-10 double-pump jump shot artist, who soared in the air like Michael Jordan and accumulated 1,472 points in three years, earned his just reward. Lear, better known as "Baldy" at Overbrook High, was a deadly, unstoppable shooter and as quick as a bird. As a freshman, I saw Lear play, and was in awe as the "King" shot the eyes out of the basket, practically each and every time.

In the Region     Wegmans recalls flour   Wegmans Food Markets recalled its house brand of flour because it may contain small, blue polyurethane balls. The supermarket chain says the 5-pound bags of its all-purpose bleached flour may contain the balls, which are part of equipment used to sift the flour. The company says they're made of food-grade material that doesn't contaminate the product and are easily seen because of their bright color and size, about half the diameter of a dime.

Joan Ulmer Bretschneider, 69, of Germantown, who started out as a school nurse and worked to upgrade the nursing profession, died Friday, Dec. 14, in her sleep of unknown causes at her home. Between 1999 and 2008, when she retired, Mrs. Bretschneider worked at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Her last position was director of education and lifelong learning. For 18 years before that, she was a nursing administrator at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in charge of all departments relating to women and children.

The patient says he has been suffering from more asthma attacks, so a natural question is: Has he been faithfully taking his daily medicine? In another era, physicians would have to rely solely on the patient or the parent for that kind of information. Increasingly, these days they also can see on a computer screen if the pharmacy has provided a refill. That is the promise behind electronic medical records, which are becoming the norm in hospitals nationwide at the urging of the federal government.

Gov. Corbett looks more and more like a stubborn holdout against covering the health-care needs of 600,000 low-income Pennsylvanians under Obamacare. His excuse is that he needs more data on the state's costs for the safety net. Lodging similar dollars-and-cents objections Wednesday, Gov. Christie vetoed legislation that would launch an online health insurance marketplace for New Jersey residents. Christie, too, wants to crunch more numbers. All in all, on this issue, the two governors are sounding like they might fit in better in some place like the Show Me State.

  When Walter Bronek had a mini-stroke in September, he was taken to the closest hospital, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton. "I never saw a neurologist at Robert Wood. The only thing I saw was a computer screen with a doctor from Jeff," said Bronek, referring to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. After an examination, the "doc-in-the-box," as Bronek called him, recommended Bronek go to Jefferson, which counts Mercer County's Robert Wood Johnson Hamilton among the 28 hospitals in its Jefferson Neuroscience Network.

Marcy Oleksiuk visits Judy Kincade once a week for a heartbreaking reason, but you'd never know it from the mood in the room. The Kincade household is relentlessly cheerful as children and grandchildren constantly come and go. Once a week, Oleksiuk is among them. She chats with Kincade, gives her an autographed picture of a favorite star, and recently exchanged Hurricane Sandy survival stories. But most of all, Oleksiuk listens to country music or watches T.J. Hooker reruns with Kincade's husband, Les. He is the heartbreaking reason.

From its roots in California, hospital owner Prime Healthcare Services Inc. is expanding across the country by acquiring financially troubled hospitals, including Roxborough Memorial and Lower Bucks in the Philadelphia region. At hospitals on the verge of closing, the for-profit company is generally welcome - even as disputes with a large union and a major competitor in Southern California dog the firm's reputation. In Roxborough, where the community hospital has changed hands three times since 2003, Prime and its regional chief executive, Peter J. Adamo, have made a positive impression, Bernard Guet, executive director of the Roxborough Development Corp., said Thursday.

* THE MOB DOCTOR. 9 p.m. Mondays, Fox 29. WHEN I WAS growing up, the white coats most TV doctors wore might as well have been white hats. If not quite gods, they were at least dedicated crusaders who could be trusted to put patient care before anything else, including their personal lives. And those personal lives didn't seem to require much effort. Because they were (mostly) men. And handsome. And doctors. Who wouldn't want to go out with them? But you don't have to be old enough to remember "Marcus Welby, M.D. " - much less those '60s icons "Dr. Kildare" or "Ben Casey" - to have noticed that today's TV doctors are decidedly more human.