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PHS Opens New Facility
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Business New Haven
4/19/1999
By: BNH
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Physicians Health Services has announced the opening of a new customer and provider call center in a new six-story building that will be located off of Beard Saw Mill Road, adjac ent to the Physicians Health Services Far Mill Crossing corporate headquarters in Shelton. In addition to the call center, the new facility will house a cafeteria, fitness facility, and state-of-the-art training department. PHS plans to hold a groundbreaking ceremony this spring and expects the facility to open next February.
Connecticut Leads Nation in Youth Smoking
Lt. Gov. Jodi M. Rell has issued a report calling for groundbreaking improvements in health and education programs to curtail smoking, especially among young people, and for the creation of an endowment fund for health programs. The report follows Rell's appointment last month by Gov. John G. Rowland to lead an executive working group to make recommendations on the use of Connecticut's share of the multi-state, $206 billion tobacco settlement reached last year, from which Connecticut may expect to receive $3.6 billion. Rell cited a recent survey by the MATCH (Mobilize Against Tobacco for Children's Health) Coalition, which found that Connecticut leads the nation in the percentage of young people who smoke and in terms of the age at which they start smoking - an average age of 11.
Newborns Screened for Hearing Impairment
Newborns at Milford Hospital are now routinely screened for hearing impairments before they leave the hospital, thanks to a donation from the Milford Kiwanis Club. The $15,000 gift enabled the hospital to purchase the Newborn Hearing Screener, which tests babies' entire hearing pathway, from the ear to the brainstem, records newborns' brainwave responses to a series of soft clicks and compares them to a pattern of normal responses. All infants now receive the quick, simple, non-invasive and reliable screening, rather than only so-called at-risk babies. Hearing impairment is the most common disability at birth, affecting nearly 24,000 babies in the U.S. each year. Although present at birth, the hearing impairment is usually not diagnosed until 30 to 36 months, well after the most critical period of language development has passed. Although hearing aids and therapy can help the hearing-impaired, the delay in diagnosis can impair a child's language, speech, psychosocial and cognitive development.
Help for New Parents
How many new parents have wished that their newborns came with an instruction manual? Now Archives Management Inc. (AMI), a privately held Connecticut company, has committed to provide partial sponsorship for Waterbury Hospital's Family Care Center Book Program. The initiative provides new mothers with the American Academy of Pediatrics book Caring for your Baby and Young Child, which provides comprehensive instructions to new parents in child care. The book augments the hospital's post-partum care procedures, which also include a complete mother and child exam.
Meanwhile, the Childbirth Center at Griffin Hospital in Derby has launched an innovative way for new parents to share the birth of their baby with loved ones around the world. “Cradle Views,” Griffin's brand new on-line birth announcement program, went live on March 15 with pictures of two babies recently born in the Childbirth Center posted on the Internet. Cradle Views enables family members or friends who live too far to travel to Griffin to go on-line to see the new baby shortly after the birth. To check out Cradle Views go to www.griffinhealth.org/hospital, then click “Childbirth Center,” then on “Cradle Views.”
Area Hospitals Honored
Several area hospitals received recent honors. New Haven's Hospital of Saint Raphael has been named one of the nation's 100 top hospitals for cardiac bypass surgery by HCIA Inc., a Baltimore-based health-care information company. A new HCIA study, 100 Top Hospitals: Cardiovascular Hospitals, identifies top hospitals performing this sophisticated procedure, based on quantitative data.
For the third year in a row, Physicians Health Services has been identified as one of the nation's leading health plans, and is one of six managed health-care plans nationwide recognized on this year's “Sachs HMO Honor Roll” - the only such awardee in the tri-state region. PHS is also the only Northeast plan to win Honor Roll recognition for three consecutive years.
The Interventional Cardiology Service at St. Vincent's Medical Center has been recognized by HCIA Inc. (see above) as one of the 100 best angioplasty programs in the U.S. The 100 top cardiovascular hospitals for PCTA (percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty) were 20 percent less expensive than the peer average, did twice as many PCTAs, and were 50 percent less likely to be escalated to CABG (coronary artery bypass) surgery.
Yale-New Haven Hospital is among the “Health Care's 100 Most Wired” hospitals according to Hospitals & Health Networks, a trade magazine published by the American Hospital Association. The survey measured not the amount of technology in a hospital or health system, but the how effectively the technology was applied for the care of patients.
U.S. Chamber Presents Health-Care Survey
With the number of individuals lacking health insurance last year increasing to 43 million, everyone has some idea about how to best reform the health care system. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has contributed to the debate with a recently conducted survey of its small-business members to determine how much their costs of providing health care had increased over the past year and how they responded to those rising costs. In the aggregate, small businesses were hit with a 20-percent premium increase in the last year - an increase twice that of the average overall increase for all sizes of businesses large and small. More than half of respondents switched to lower-cost plans, while nearly half helped to absorb cost increases by passing the cost on to employees through increased deductibles, higher co-pays or premium hikes. Ten percent discontinued providing benefits entirely.
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