Hopkins Doctors

Kaiser Permanente officials are hoping a new agreement wit Johns Hopkins Medicine will attract new customers and strengthen its position in the mid-Atlantic region.The nation's No. 1 HMO, which has about 52,000 members in the Baltimore area, said yesterday that it will allow patients in certain networks to receive care from Hopkins-affiliated physicians after the beginning of the new year. Currently, Kaiser members may see only the HMO's own doctors."We have been unable to sell our choice products in the Baltimore market because of the limited provider network," said Bob Williams, vice president and executive director of Kaiser's Baltimore office.

Facebook has launched a program to promote organ donation, which grew from a conversation between the social media company's chief operating officer and a Johns Hopkins surgeon already passionate about the cause. COO Sheryl Sandberg and Dr. Andrew M. Cameron took the chat they had about the shortage of organs at their 20th college reunion at Harvard University and turned it into reality. Facebook announced Tuesday a new organ transplant initiative that could reach hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Josephine Rollette walked slowly to the podium. "It's very devastating," she said. "I really don't know what to do."Four months ago, her 13-year-old granddaughter, Tezara Horsey, was accidentally shot and killed at a friend's East Baltimore house. Police said the boy who pulled the trigger told them he didn't know the .22-caliber revolver was loaded.After Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke yesterday announced a campaign promoting handgun safety, the 63-year-old grandmother quietly thanked city officials and doctors at a news conference at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

It's well known that world-renowned doctors from Johns Hopkins Hospital regularly treat royalty, other dignitaries and U.S. service members. According to the CBS news show 60 Minutes , they also have been called upon to patch up those who don't appear on America's side. As part of a report Sunday about the harsh interrogation techniques used by the government after the9/11attacks, the news program said a Hopkins doctor was brought in to operate on a suspected terrorist.

The Johns Hopkins University has sued two physician groups and the financially troubled parent of the CareFirst health maintenance organization for nearly $500,000 that the university's doctors claim they are owed.The lawsuit alleges that the two physician groups, Maryland Health Physicians Associates and Berdann & Krieger, sent CareFirst members to Hopkins doctors but have failed to pay for LTC medical services.In turn, the suit claims, HealthCare Corporation of America, which owns CareFirst, is liable for any amount that remains unpaid by the doctors' groups.

Sitting in the doctor's office in August, elated to learn she was pregnant for the first time, Amanda Weeks had a question. Could she still compete in the half-marathon at the Baltimore Running Festival? "I've raced all 10 years (of the event)," said Weeks, 33, of Ellicott City. "I want to keep the tradition going. " Told she could run, Weeks relaxed. "Running is my stress reliever," she said. "To take it away, especially now, would be tough. " Weeks will be nearly five months pregnant when she answers the gun Saturday for the 13.1-mile race through the streets of Baltimore.

Precisely at 8 a.m. every Friday, Hopkins doctors in starched white coats converge on a small, oak-paneled amphitheater, finding seats on the long wooden benches to take part in a medical tradition that began a century ago.Interns and residents peer over the balconies. World-renowned specialists are sitting in the audience of more than 200 doctors. A huge portrait of Dr. Henry Mills Hurd, superintendent when Johns Hopkins Hospital opened in 1889, stares out over the steep rows. Latecomers stand in the back, craning their necks to see.With the words, "May I have the first slide, please?"

Trying to broaden its reach beyond its inner-city birthplace and Baltimore County, Johns Hopkins Health System is considering sites in Howard County to erect a medical office complex that may be 100,000 square feet or larger.The proposed complex, which has not yet been approved by Hopkins management, would follow the trend of other medical institutions, expanding their geographic base as they seek more patients.Hopkins, one of the state's largest health care providers, has looked at about 16 locations in Howard County in search of a 10-acre site, said Sam H. Clark, an attorney in Hopkins' legal department.

Johns Hopkins Medicine yesterday announced a "strategic affiliation" with GAMBRO Healthcare to provide outpatient kidney dialysis services.GAMBRO has purchased the dialysis clinic at the Hopkins Hospital campus for an undisclosed sum, said Dr. Paul Scheel Jr., director of nephrology at Hopkins. The clinic will be staffed by Hopkins faculty physicians, but 27 other employees -- nurses, technicians and clerical staff -- have become GAMBRO employees.Scheel said Hopkins sought a partner in dialysis because of the large amount of capital required to start or expand dialysis service.

Shaken by the level of debt carried by young doctors to pay for their education, officials at the Johns Hopkins University have decided to continue counseling them on finances years after they have graduated.This word to the wise will not put T. Rowe Price out of business. When financial aid advisers at the medical school speak of portfolios, they are talking of loans, not investments.But it's a service for Hopkins doctors that also has become a selling point in attracting future physicians to Hopkins' medical school.

Emiline D. Lazzeri, a Baltimore County native who as a child lived for a year in a glass-encased room at Johns Hopkins Hospital while being treated for rheumatic fever , died of congestive heart failure March 14 at her home in Largo, Fla. She was 80. Born Emiline Phillips, she grew up across the city line in Baltimore County's Jones Creek neighborhood and graduated from Sparrows Point High School. Her childhood was marked by a rare illness she developed at age 6. In attempts to diagnose the illness, she became a fixture at Baltimore's most famous medical institution for one year and linked to one of its most renowned doctors forever.

When a young woman is diagnosed with cancer, getting pregnant is probably the last thing on her mind. But if she wants children in the future, it's something she should think about. The chemotherapy and radiation treatments used to treat cancer can hurt a women's fertility. Nearly 10 percent of the 1.5 million diagnosed with cancer each year are of childbearing age, according to the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Melissa M. Yates, an assistant professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins Fertility Center, says these women need to think about fertility preservation before they begin treatment for cancer.

Sitting in the doctor's office in August, elated to learn she was pregnant for the first time, Amanda Weeks had a question. Could she still compete in the half-marathon at the Baltimore Running Festival? "I've raced all 10 years (of the event)," said Weeks, 33, of Ellicott City. "I want to keep the tradition going. " Told she could run, Weeks relaxed. "Running is my stress reliever," she said. "To take it away, especially now, would be tough. " Weeks will be nearly five months pregnant when she answers the gun Saturday for the 13.1-mile race through the streets of Baltimore.

In a July 13 opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a pediatrician and a lawyer from Harvard suggest that child-protective services take severely overweight children away from negligent parents. I do think this question should be part of the public debate on childhood obesity. However, obesity is only one of the many childhood miseries that may be attributable to parental behavior. Restricting ourselves to only medical problems, consider the asthmatic child whose parents smoke cigarettes in the home; the child with food allergies whose parents don't manage to provide an allergen-free diet; the family that chooses to keep a dog in the house after the dog has bitten a child; parents who don't give required medications; parents who don't comply with their own mental health therapies and expose children to excessive stress and emotional trauma; and parents who expose children to domestic violence because they cannot control their own behavior.

A new study finds that a safety checklist program developed by a Johns Hopkins doctor has reduced patient deaths in Michigan hospitals by 10 percent, in addition to nearly eliminating bloodstream infections in health care facilities that embraced the prevention effort. The research, published in the British Medical Journal, is the first to show a drop in patient mortality in hospitals using the Hopkins program. Previous studies have found major reductions in bloodstream infections from using the checklist when inserting catheters or central lines to give patients medication, fluids or nourishment.

A question about health benefits, posed by Representative-elect Andy Harris during a private orientation session for new House members, blew up Tuesday into the first mini-flap of the Maryland Republican's budding Washington career. It was an unwelcome lesson for Harris in the ways of the polarized nation's capital, where a closed-door meeting is no guarantee of secrecy, especially when a couple of hundred people are present. During a briefing Monday on employee benefits for new congressmen, staff aides and family members, Harris wanted to know why he would have to wait a month for his new health insurance coverage to start.

The students trickle in, some drifting, most bustling. There are men in business suits and women in blazers and skirts. But many are wearing lab coats with their names in stitched script. One rushes in in surgical scrubs.At the back of the amphitheater-style lecture hall in the Johns Hopkins medical school complex is a table with pretzels and cut-up fresh vegetables, pots of coffee, cans of Coke. The students help themselves as they settle in. Class begins. A pager sounds, and one of the lab-coated students rushes out to a phone.

The showdown between Johns Hopkins Medicine and insurer Mid Atlantic Medical Services Inc. ended yesterday after both sides agreed to a new contract that increases physician payments. The agreement, which is retroactive to last month and lasts until Dec. 31, 2004, comes after two years of intense negotiations in which Hopkins maintained that MAMSI was paying doctors about 25 percent to 30 percent less than other insurers. "At the end of the day, after very difficult discussions, we were able to reach an agreement ... and did get increases in the fee schedule," said Patricia Brown, president of Johns Hopkins Healthcare LLC, which handles managed care contracting for the Hopkins system.

The human body is a fragile instrument, and when it shuts down — as it does, tragically, for thousands of athletes each year — there is nothing that can be done. It often doesn't matter if trained medical personnel are nearby, or that the athlete was in peak physical condition. But the death of a marathon runner grabs our attention in a unique way. When it happens — and it happens every year — media attention follows. There are often questions about whether the human heart was made to hold up to the strain of running 26.2 miles, or suggestions that marathons on days when the temperature is unexpectedly warm be postponed.

Maryland, trying to combat one of the highest growth rates of bloodstream infections in the country, is joining the national effort to curb the problem by adopting a prevention program created by a Johns Hopkins doctor. Forty-four Maryland hospitals recently announced they will institute measures developed by Hopkins critical-care doctor Peter Pronovost. His highly recognized approach has helped decrease infections in other states. Pronovost and his team created the program nearly nine years ago that calls for simple steps to curb blood infections — usually associated with catheters.