Hopkins Hospital

A year ago, when Johns Hopkins Hospital snared the husband-and-wife medical team of Sam Ritter and Rebecca Snider, the hospital seemed well on its way to restoring the luster to its once-proud division of pediatric cardiology."

For more than a century, doctors referred their patients to specialists at Johns Hopkins Hospital because it was the best. Today, the best is no longer enough.As insurance companies weigh care against service and cost, they are knocking the top -- and most expensive -- academic research institutions off their lists of preferred providers. In response, Hopkins is scrambling to make itself both affordable and user friendly.In the past several months, prodded by Dr. James A. Block, president of the Hopkins Hospital and umbrella Johns Hopkins Health System, senior officers of the hospital and medical school have drawn up a multi-faceted strategy to keep the patients coming while preserving Hopkins' role as one of the world's premier medical institutions.

Surgeons at Johns Hopkins Hospital tethered a 25-year-old woman to a pig's liver in August to save her from certain death, then transplanted a human organ into her the next day when one suddenly became available.It is thought to have been the first successful use of an animal liver as a bridge to a human transplant.The announcement at Hopkins Hospital came yesterday, a day after a woman who had received a transplanted pig liver at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles died of complications from acute liver failure, though the animal's liver had been functioning, doctors said.

Police said a man killed in an early-morning automobile accident in Charles Village yesterday was a Yugoslav national and an employee of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Police and the hospital declined to release the man's name or position, saying that his next of kin in Yugoslavia had not been notified. The man was a passenger in a Honda Accord that was struck by a Buick Century at East 29th Street and Guilford Avenue. The driver of the Honda was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center for head injuries, including a broken jaw. Information about the driver of the Honda and the occupants of the Buick was not immediately available.

A 5-year-old Harford County boy is in good condition at Johns Hopkins Hospital after he was accidentally struck by his parents' car Sunday in the family's Bel Air driveway, a hospital spokesman and sheriff's deputies said yesterday.William Lorenz Moeser IV of the 1700 block of Berdan Court in the Green Ridge II neighborhood and his parents, Susan Moeser, 37, and William Moeser III, 39, were returning from a party about 1:30 a.m. when the incident occurred, sheriff's deputies said.Mrs. Moeser parked the family's 1991 Mercury Cougar on the sloped driveway in front of their brick rancher and was getting out when the car began to roll backward, the deputies said.

Johns Hopkins Hospital has agreed to pay $192,500 to a Columbia man who fell out of his hospital bed while recovering from heart surgery, injuring his head.The payment to Indravadan K. Desai, 69, settles a medical malpractice claim filed last year in Baltimore Circuit Court against the hospital and one of its nurses, alleging they were negligent in letting him fall from the bed.Neither Jeff E. Messing, Desai's lawyer, nor Joseph J. Bottiglieri, an attorney for Hopkins Hospital, would comment on the case or the settlement, citing a confidentiality agreement.

A 28-year-old East Baltimore man was convicted yesterday of abducting a 27-year-old medical student on her way to Johns Hopkins Hospital and then raping her and holding her for ransom.Calvin Mayo III faces a maximum of life plus more than 60 years in prison at his sentencing, set for Feb. 8 before Baltimore Circuit Judge Elsbeth L. Bothe.A jury deliberated an hour yesterday before finding Mayo guilty of kidnapping, armed robbery and extortion as well as first-degree rape and a third-degree sex offense.

For the first time, Johns Hopkins Hospital is asking the surrounding East Baltimore community to tell hospital medical experts what it wants and needs to combat its health problems.And, based on preliminary discussions with the advisory board of the new initiative, announced today, the hospital soon will be tackling many of the most difficult health problems the community faces.These include asthma -- which sends many children to the hospital's emergency room and keeps them out of school -- lung and breast cancer, infant mortality and stemming the spread of HIV disease, several members of the board said.

The president of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System announced yesterday that he had tendered his resignation to Hopkins trustees and would end his tenure in mid-September. He did not say what his future would hold.In a letter to administrators, Dr. James A. Block, who has headed the hospital since July 1992, wrote that the announcement was to confirm reports that he would leave the East Baltimore medical complex.Both in the letter and again in an interview yesterday, Block said that his departure was forced by a restructuring needed to fuse the administration of the hospital with that of the Johns Hopkins University.

A four-bedroom house under construction in the Governor's Run development in Ellicott City will help parents whose children suffer from life-threatening illnesses.Pulte Homes is building "The Endowment House" and donating the proceeds from its sale to the Johns Hopkins Children's House in Baltimore, which opened nearly four years ago.The Children's House charges families only $15 a night so they can stay in the city while their children receive treatment at nearby Johns Hopkins Hospital."Many people can't even afford that, so we're operating at a constant deficit," said Brian Morrison, executive director at the Children's House.