Another Maternity Unit Closing in Philadelphia

Yet another Philadelphia hospital has announced the closing of its maternity unit. Citing financial stresses, Chestnut Hill Hospital said yesterday that it would stop delivering babies by Nov. 4 and close its maternity unit Nov. 7. Seventy hospital employees will lose their jobs. Since 1997, 15 hospitals in the region have closed their maternity units. Most say the combination of high medical malpractice insurance and low insurance reimbursements makes the service a money loser. With Chestnut Hill’s unit closed, only seven hospitals in Philadelphia will offer obstetrical care. Chestnut Hill has been delivering babies for 104 years. “We take no joy in doing this,” Brooks Turkel, the hospital’s chief executive officer, said yesterday. The hospital delivers about 1,000 babies a year, or 2 percent of the 53,000 babies born annually in Philadelphia and the four suburban Pennsylvania counties. Maternity care and the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit were losing $2.5 million a year, he said. It was too expensive for a relatively small program to support the NICU, he said, but that was the standard of care Philadelphians expect.

Please click on the link below to read the Philadelphia Inquirer article:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/business/20080904_Another_maternity_unit_closing_in_Philadelphia.html

For more information on defending medical malpractice and nursing home matters in Florida contact Howard Citron at The Citron Law Firm, P.A. – www.citronlegal.com.

Study: MMR Vaccine Not Linked to Autism

The MMR vaccine is not associated with autism, researchers said. “We are persuaded that there is no link,” according to Ian Lipkin, M.D., of the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University. Although true believers in the theory of a relationship between MMR vaccine and autism will probably not be dissuaded, the study provides more evidence against such a link than any in the past. As part of the research, the investigators replicated the 1988 study that detected a link and found nothing. With colleagues, Dr. Lipkin conducted a case-control study looking at the timing of the onset of autism and gastrointestinal disorders, in relation to the vaccine, used to protect against measles, mumps, and rubella. The study also looked for the presence of measles in the bowel tissue of 25 cases and 13 controls. Neither investigation supported the hypothesis — first suggested in 1998 — that the measles component of the vaccine can lead to inflammation in the bowel and the release of neuroactive chemicals that promote developmental neuropathology, Dr. Lipkin and colleagues said in the online journal PLoS ONE.

Please click on the link below to read the MedPage Today article:

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Neurology/Autism/tb/10772

For more information on defending medical malpractice and nursing home matters in Florida contact Howard Citron at The Citron Law Firm, P.A. – www.citronlegal.com.