Tag Archives: Hospital

Man’s body, seen tossed from plane, found on roof of Mexican hospital

Police officers stand guard near a crime scene where the body of a man, who witnesses said was tossed from a plane, landed on a hospital roof in Culiacan, in Mexico's northern Sinaloa state April 12, 2017. REUTERS/Jesus Bustamante

By Gabriel Stargardter

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The body of a man, who witnesses said was tossed from a plane, landed on a hospital roof in Mexico’s northern Sinaloa state on Wednesday, according to a public health service official in the region, which is home to notorious drug traffickers.

The body landed on the roof of an IMSS hospital in the town of Eldorado, around 7:30 a.m. local time, said the official, who was not authorized to give his name.

Witnesses standing outside the health center reported a plane flying low over the hospital and a person thrown out, the health official said.

Later on Wednesday, Sinaloa’s Deputy Attorney General Jesus Martin Robles said a body, found on the hospital roof, showed injuries that appeared to be related to a strong impact. He did not confirm that it had been thrown from a plane.

The public health service official said two more bodies were reported to have been found in the town, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Culiacan, the state capital. Local media reported that those two bodies were thrown from the same plane as the body that landed on the hospital.

The official did not know if the man was alive when he was thrown from the plane. Officials from the state prosecutor’s office were at the scene, he said.

“This is an agricultural area and planes are regularly used for fumigation,” the official said, adding that the IMSS hospital was operating normally.

Local media reported that suspected gang members had picked up the two other corpses.

Sinaloa is the home state of Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, who ran the Sinaloa drug cartel until his arrest in 2016. He was extradited to the United States earlier this year.

Ever since Chapo’s arrest, security in the state has deteriorated, as the Sinaloa cartel struggles to adapt to infighting and fresh threats from rival groups.

(Additional Reporting by Noe Torres; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Leslie Adler)

Iraqi troops retreat after Mosul hospital battle

Iraqi forces backed by tribal militias during battle to retake a village from the Islamic State on the eastern bank of the river Tigris, Iraq

By Ahmed Rasheed and Saif Hameed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi troops who seized a hospital deep inside Mosul believed to be used as an Islamic State military base have retreated after a fierce counter-attack, giving up some of their biggest gains in a hard-fought seven-week campaign to recapture the city.

The soldiers seized Salam hospital, less than a mile (1.5 km) from the Tigris river running through central Mosul, on Tuesday but pulled back the next day after they were hit by six suicide car bombs and “heavy enemy fire”, according to a statement by the U.S.-led coalition supporting Iraqi forces.

Coalition warplanes, at Iraq’s request, also struck a building inside the hospital complex from which the militants were firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, it said.

Tuesday’s rapid advance into the Wahda neighborhood where the hospital is located marked a change of tactics after a month of grueling fighting in east Mosul, in which the army has sought to capture and clear neighborhoods block by block.

The soldiers are part of a U.S.-backed 100,000-strong coalition of Iraqi forces including the army, federal police, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and mainly Shi’ite Popular Mobilization forces battling to crush Islamic State in Mosul.

Defeating the militants in their Iraq stronghold would mark a major step in rolling back the caliphate declared by the jihadists in parts of Syria and Iraq when they took over Mosul in mid-2014.

But with two years to dig themselves into northern Iraq’s largest city, retreating fighters have waged a lethal defence, deploying hundreds of suicide car bombers, mortar barrages and snipers against the advancing soldiers and exploiting a network of tunnels to ambush them in residential areas.

“GATES OF HELL”

Soldiers from the army’s Ninth Armored division were left exposed on Tuesday after punching into the Wahda neighborhood.

“When we advanced first into Wahda, Daesh (Islamic State) showed little resistance and we thought they had fled,” an officer briefed on the operation told Reuters by telephone. “But once we took over the hospital, the gates of hell opened wide”.

“They started to appear and attack from every corner, every street and every house near the hospital,” said the officer who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media. He said insurgents may also have used a tunnel network reaching into the hospital complex itself.

Iraqi military spokesmen have said little about the fighting around the hospital, stressing instead gains they said were being made in other parts of east Mosul, including the Ilam neighborhood a few districts northeast.

Brigadier-General Yahya Rasoul, a spokesman for Iraq’s joint operations command, said on Wednesday “operations are continuing” around Wahda. He could not immediately be contacted on Thursday.

The statement by the coalition said Iraqi troops “fought off several counter-attacks and six VBIEDs (car bombs) … before retrograding a short distance, under heavy enemy fire”.

The Iraqi officer said that when the troops were inside the hospital complex, fighting off the militants, they came under attack from suicide bombers who he said either infiltrated through tunnels or had been hiding in the hospital grounds.

“We don’t know, they were like ghosts,” he said.

Iraq does not give casualty figures or report on its equipment losses, but the officer said 20 soldiers were killed and around 20 armored vehicles were destroyed or damaged.

Those figures could not be confirmed. Islamic State’s Amaq news agency said more than 20 vehicles were destroyed and dozens of soldiers killed, and that they had been forced to retreat.

Alongside those figures it showed a picture of a smouldering tank, its turret blown off, next to a crater in the road.

Around 280 km (175 miles) southwest of Mosul dozens of people, mainly civilians, were killed on Wednesday in air strikes which hit a western Iraqi town close to the border with Syria, local parliamentarians and hospital sources said.

They said the strikes hit a busy market area in the Islamic State-held town of Qaim, in the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim province of Anbar. Among the victims were 12 women and 19 children.

An Iraqi military statement said Iraqi air force planes conducted air strikes “on a terrorist hideout” in the area shortly after noon on Wednesday, as well as a second attack an unspecified location.

It said at least 50 terrorists were killed. It gave no details of civilian casualties, but said that the region – and all information coming out of it – was controlled by Islamic State.

Iraq’s speaker of parliament, the country’s most senior Sunni Muslim politician, called on Thursday for a government inquiry into the air strikes.

(Writing by Dominic Evans, editing by Peter Millership)

In-patient or not? Medicare requires hospitals to tell you

An entrance sign to a hospital is seen in Dallas, Texas,

By Mark Miller

CHICAGO (Reuters) – You are in the hospital for tests after experiencing dizziness. You are nervous about what the tests will show, but at least you do not have to worry about hospital bills – you have Medicare, so you can relax about healthcare coverage. Or can you?

Not if you are in the hospital under “observation status” – a Medicare designation applied to patients deemed insufficiently ill for formal admission, but still too sick to be allowed to go home. Observation status can result in thousands of dollars in higher costs – especially if you need post-hospital nursing care.

Medicare covers care in skilled nursing facilities, but only for patients who were first formally admitted to a hospital for three consecutive days.

Federal data shows that the number of Medicare patients classified as under observation has jumped sharply in recent years, and it has stirred a great deal of pushback from Medicare enrollees and advocacy groups. A new law – the Notice Act – requires hospitals to at least notify patients if they stay in the hospital more than 24 hours without being formally admitted. Patients will receive the warnings starting in January, but advocates argue the new protection does not go far enough.

“It does half of what we would like to see,” said Toby Edelman, senior policy attorney at the Center for Medicare Advocacy. “The notice should also allow patients to appeal their status.”

Hospitals have been motivated to use the status to avoid costly penalties from Medicare for improper admissions under a well-intentioned effort by Medicare to control costs through a program that audits hospitals for possible overpayments. The program began during the George W. Bush administration.

The number of patients cared for under observation status doubled to nearly 1.9 million in 2014 compared with 2006, according to figures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The majority (54 percent) were for observation stays of less than 24 hours; another 38 percent of the stays were 48 hours or less, CMS reports.

FACING HIGHER COSTS

The new notifications will require hospitals to inform patients orally and in writing if they are on observation status for more than 24 hours. The written notification, developed by CMS, is called the Medicare Outpatient Observation Notice (MOON). The MOON also explains the cost implications of receiving hospital services as an outpatient.

The costs of observation status can affect any enrollee on traditional fee-for-service Medicare. (Beneficiaries using Medicare Advantage, which provide all-in-one care, will also receive the MOON, but some Medicare Advantage plans will cover a stay in a skilled nursing facility without first requiring that patients have a three-day inpatient hospital stay.)

Medicare normally covers up to a maximum of 100 days of care in a skilled nursing facility following a hospital admission – it pays 100 percent for the first 20 days, and patients are responsible for a daily $161 co-pay for the next 80 days. But patients leaving the hospital for a nursing facility after an observation pay the full cost out of pocket.

RISING NURSING HOME COSTS

The cost of skilled nursing care is substantial, and rising quickly. This year, the national median monthly cost of a private nursing room is $7,698, according to a Genworth survey, and it runs much higher in states such as New York ($11,330 per month) and California ($9,338).

Medicaid would cover the stay if the patient meets the program’s low-income requirements (a status called “dual-eligible”). A commercial long-term care policy might provide some coverage, although many of these policies have “elimination” features (deductibles) that require patients to pay the first 90 days out of pocket.

Observation status also affects coverage of drug usage in the hospital. Medicare Part B would cover drug usage for the specific problem related to the hospitalization, subject to Part B’s typical 20 percent copay); for routine drugs that you take at home (say, a statin for high cholesterol), practices vary. Some hospitals allow patients to bring their own drugs from home, others do not, and charge much more than you would pay at a typical pharmacy.

Some – but not all – Part D drug plans will cover some of these prescription drug costs.

A broader fix to the observation status has garnered broad support from organizations ranging from AARP to the American Medical Association, elder law groups and Medicare advocacy groups. Legislation that has bipartisan support has been introduced in the U.S. House and Senate that would require that time spent in observation be counted toward meeting the three-day prior inpatient stay that is necessary to qualify for Medicare coverage.

“The bill is simple,” said Edelman of the Center for Medicare Advocacy. “Count the time in hospital, no matter what. If you are in the hospital for three midnights, you have met this requirement.”

(The writer is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

(Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Orlando hospitals won’t charge nightclub shooting victims for care

Gunshot survivor Angel Colon is surrounded by doctors as he listens to remarks at a news conference at the Orlando Regional Medical Center o

By Colleen Jenkins

(Reuters) – Two Florida hospitals will not seek payment of medical bills from the dozens of people treated for injuries suffered in the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June, officials at the health facilities said.

The move leaves the hospitals with estimated unreimbursed costs topping $5.5 million, they said on Thursday.

Forty-nine people were killed and 53 were wounded by gunman Omar Mateen before police fatally shot him after a three-hour standoff inside the gay dance club on June 12.

Gunshot survivor Patience Carter is comforted by Dr. Neil Finkler as fellow survivor Angel Santiago looks on at a news conference at Florida Hospital Orlando on the shooting at the

Gunshot survivor Patience Carter (2nd L) is comforted by Dr. Neil Finkler as fellow survivor Angel Santiago (R) looks on at a news conference at Florida Hospital Orlando on the shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, U.S., June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo

U.S. authorities said Mateen was self-radicalized and acted alone, without assistance or orders from abroad, to commit the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

“It was incredible to see how our community came together in the wake of the senseless Pulse shooting,” said Daryl Tol, president and CEO of Florida Hospital. “We hope this gesture can add to the heart and goodwill that defines Orlando.”

Florida Hospital treated 12 shooting victims at a cost of about $525,400, it said.

Orlando Health said in a statement that it expects to absorb costs exceeding $5 million after payments from funding sources such as insurance plans. Its main hospital, Orlando Regional Medical Center, treated 44 patients at its trauma center located a few blocks from the nightclub.

One patient hurt in the attack remains in guarded condition at the hospital, spokeswoman Sabrina Childress said in an email.

“During this very trying time, many organizations, individuals, and charities have reached out to Orlando Health to show their support,” Orlando Health President and CEO David Strong said in a statement. “This is simply our way of paying that kindness forward.”

The nightclub remains closed. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton made a quick stop at the memorial outside Pulse on Wednesday, the Orlando Sentinel newspaper reported.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, N.C.; Editing by Bill Trott)

Suicide Bomber kills at least 70 at Pakistan Hospital

First responders and volunteers transport an injured man away from the scene of a bomb blast outside a hospital in Quetta

By Gul Yousafzai

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) – A suicide bomber in Pakistan killed at least 70 people and wounded dozens more in an attack on mourners gathered at a hospital in Quetta, according to officials in the violence-plagued southwestern province of Baluchistan.

The bomber struck as more than 100 mourners, mostly lawyers and journalists, crowded into the emergency department to accompany the body of a prominent lawyer who had been shot and killed in the city earlier in the day, Faridullah, a journalist who was among the wounded, told Reuters.

Abdul Rehman Miankhel, a senior official at the government-run Civil Hospital, where the explosion occurred, told reporters that at least 63 people had been killed, with more than 112 wounded, as the casualty toll spiked from initial estimates.

“There are many wounded, so the death toll could rise,” said Rehmat Saleh Baloch, the provincial health minister.

Television footage showed scenes of chaos, with panicked people fleeing through debris as smoke filled the hospital corridors.

The motive behind the attack was unclear and no group had yet claimed responsibility, but several lawyers have been targeted during a recent spate of killings in Quetta.

The latest victim, Bilal Anwar Kasi, was shot and killed while on his way to the city’s main court complex, senior police official Nadeem Shah told Reuters. He was the president of Baluchistan Bar Association.

The subsequent suicide attack appeared to target his mourners, Anwar ul Haq Kakar, a spokesman for the Baluchistan government, said.

“It seems it was a pre-planned attack,” he said.

Police cordoned off the hospital following the blast.

Aside from a long-running separatist insurgency, and sectarian tensions, Baluchistan also suffers from rising crime.

In January, a suicide bomber killed 15 people outside a polio eradication center in an attack claimed by both the Pakistani Taliban and Jundullah, another Islamist militant group that has pledged allegience to Islamic State in the Middle East.

Quetta has also long been regarded as a base for the Afghan Taliban, whose leadership has regularly held meetings there in the past.

In May, Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed by a U.S. drone strike while traveling to Quetta from the Pakistan-Iran border.

(Writing by Asad Hashim; Editing by Paul Tait and Simon Cameron-Moore)

U.S. military punishes 16 over 2015 Afghan hospital bombing

Hospital beds lay in the Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan

By Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military will announce on Friday that has it taken disciplinary action against 16 service members over a deadly Oct. 3 air strike in Afghanistan that destroyed a hospital run by the international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, U.S. officials told Reuters.

The disclosure of the nonjudicial punishments will come during the release of the findings of a U.S. military investigation into the incident, which will broadly conclude that the strike was a tragic mistake, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

That finding is consistent with the results of a preliminary investigation released by the U.S. military in November, when commanders stressed that American forces did not intentionally target the hospital.

Instead, General John Campbell, who was then head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, described a series of blunders that allowed the American forces to target the hospital, even though it was on a no-strike list.

MSF, known as Doctors Without Borders in English, has in the past publicly cast doubt on the idea that the strike could have been a mistake.

Forty-two people were killed in the incident and 37 were wounded as American forces helped Afghans repel Taliban insurgents from the city of Kunduz last year.

One general was among those singled out for disciplinary action, the officials said. The nonjudicial punishments include letters of reprimand, which could have a career-ending effect on the service members involved.

“These people are not promotable,” said one U.S. official.

According to the initial U.S. investigation, U.S. forces had meant to target a different building in the city and were led off-track by a technical error in their aircraft’s mapping system that initially directed them to an empty field.

The U.S. forces then looked for a target that was visually similar to the one they had originally sought, the former National Directorate of Security headquarters in Kunduz, which they believed was occupied by insurgents.

The Taliban’s brief capture of the Kunduz provincial capital was arguably the biggest victory for the militants in the 15-year war since they were toppled by U.S.-led forces in late 2001.

Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since the departure of most foreign combat troops in 2014.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Bernard Orr and James Dalgleish)

23 Civilians Killed in Afghan Hospital Due to U.S. Airstrikes

A U.S.-led bombing accidentally hit a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, resulting in the death of 23 civilians.

The victims included 13 staff members and 10 patients. Three of the patients who were killed were children. Doctors Without Borders also reported that 37 people were wounded. One nurse recounted the terrible situation to the Huffington Post.

“There are no words for how terrible it was. In the intensive care unit, six patients were burning in their beds,” Lajos Zoltan Jecs said in an account posted on the MSF website.

She continued describing the situation. She watched colleagues die, heard patients calling out for help in all directions, and watched some of the staff just freeze, tears streaming down their faces.

General John Campbell addressed reporters at the Pentagon Monday. He stated that the strikes were called for by Afghan forces to protect U.S. forces.

“We have now learned that on October 3, Afghan forces advised that they were taking fire from enemy positions and asked for air support from U.S. forces,” he said. “An airstrike was then called to eliminate the Taliban threat, and several innocent civilians were accidentally struck.” Campbell also offered his condolences.

Afghan officials called the situation a tragedy, but have remained mute on the situation.

U.S., NATO, and Afghan officials are investigating the situation. Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), is demanding an independent investigation and calling the situation a “war crime.”

“Under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed, MSF demands that a full and transparent investigation into the event be conducted by an independent international body,” the organization said. “Relying only on an internal investigation by a party to the conflict would be wholly insufficient.”

MSF reports that the series of bombings took place in 15 minute intervals between 2:08 a.m. and 3:15 a.m. Saturday. The charity added that the bombings continued even after U.S. and Afghan officials were notified that the hospital was being attacked.

Afghan police report that Taliban militants had been using the hospital compound as a hiding place, but Doctors Without Borders denied the claims.

The charity has since closed the hospital due the extensive damages to the building and equipment. In less than a week, MSF has treated 394 wounded people in Kunduz.

“There is no access to trauma care now for the civilians and for the wounded in the whole area of Kunduz, which is some kind of battleground for the moment,” said Christopher Stokes, the aid group’s general director.

ACLU Trying To Force Hospital To Perform Abortions

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington is attempting to force a hospital to perform abortions in their facility.

The lawsuit claims that Skagit Regional Health is violating a state law that requires medical facilities that provide maternity care to also kill babies via abortion.  The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a woman who is doctoral nursing student.

“As a woman and a health care provider, I care deeply about reproductive health issues. I want to make sure that women throughout Washington have access to the full range of reproductive health care services,” Kevan Coffey said in a statement. “And I personally want to have all options, including abortion, available to me.”

“The right of women to choose or to refuse to have an abortion is fundamental and has long been recognized under Washington law,” said ACLU Executive Director Kathleen Taylor. “We want to ensure that all women in our state can access the full range of reproductive health care at public health facilities in their communities.”

The state has said numerous times that hospitals have to provide abortion services if they want to provide maternity services.

“Jump Started By The Holy Spirit”

The mother of a Missouri teen believed to have died in a lake says that God brought her child back from the dead.

John Smith, 14, was playing with two friends on frozen Lake Sainte Louise when they fell through the ice.  While the other two boys were rescued, the initial rescuers couldn’t find Smith.  It took 15 minutes for rescuers to find his body.

Doctors at St. Joseph Hospital performed CPR for almost half an hour without success.  After being clinically dead for 45 minutes, the doctors called Smith’s mother into the room to break the bad news.

Dr. Ken Sutterer said that when Joyce Smith came into the room, she refused to accept that her son was dead and began loudly praying.

“I don’t remember what all I said,” Joyce Smith said. “But I remember, ‘Holy God, please send your Holy Spirit to save my son. I want my son, please save him.’”

Within minutes, hospital personnel were stunned.  John’s pulse returned.  He was rushed to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center where doctors were concerned that he would have permanent brain damage due to being without oxygen for at least 45 minutes.

Within 48 hours, Smith opened his eyes and responded perfectly to doctor’s questions.

“It’s a bonafide miracle,” said Dr. Jeremy Garrett, who tested Smith’s brain function.

Former Football Star Announces Opening of Children’s Hospital

Former football star Tim Tebow, roundly attacked by anti-Christianists for the open displays of his faith in his life, has announced that a children’s hospital is opening in the Philippines.

The Tim Tebow Foundation said that the former quarterback has been working since 2011 to build and obtain the operating license from the Philippine Health Department.  The hospital is already working to help impoverished children but will officially have a “grand opening” in spring 2015.

The five-story hospital was built in conjunction with CURE International, a non-profit that works to provide medical care for impoverished children.  The hospital will have 30 beds, three operating rooms and a staff of over 50.

“I have always had a great love and passion for the Filipino people,” Tebow, the founder of the foundation, said in a statement. “It is so exciting to be able to provide healing and care for these incredibly deserving children halfway around the world.”

With the opening of the Tebow CARE Hospital, the group will now have 12 hospitals around the world to help children in need.