Hospital Staff

MARRERO, La. -- For about a day after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, emergency triage at the West Jefferson Medical Center was reduced to drive-by evaluations by doctors and nurses standing on the curb. "We just looked in the car, and if they weren't dying we had to send them away," said Kerry Jeanice, a staff nurse. The situation has improved markedly more than two weeks later, with at least 90 percent of the hospital's staff back at work and specialty areas like nuclear medicine and heart catheterization back in business.

When Alice L. Bower went to the Upper Chesapeake Medical Center's emergency room last April, the 32-year-old mother of four complained of abdominal pain that the staff of the Bel Air hospital diagnosed as a benign ovarian cyst, court documents show. Five days later, Bowers died. In a lawsuit filed yesterday in Harford County Circuit Court, a lawyer for Bower's four children contends that she died after receiving an excessive dosage of a powerful pain medication. The medical malpractice suit seeks at least $2 million from Upper Chesapeake Health System Inc., the doctor who oversaw Bower's care and the medical provider that employs the physician.

Eight months after the Victorian cupola of a historic Sheppard Pratt hospital building in Towson collapsed in a four-alarm fire, work crews raised a 17,000-pound replacement yesterday afternoon. The installation restores the 113-year-old tower of the B Building, which, with its companion A Building, is on the National Register of Historic Landmarks. The cupola's replacement also provides a sense of closure for psychiatric patients traumatized by last summer's fire and ensuing evacuation, hospital staff said.

Johns Hopkins Hospital recently threw a party in the basement atrium of the Ross Building on its East Baltimore campus -- and Daniel Grossman was 45 minutes late. Nobody took offense. He has earned the right to be behind schedule. The party was a premature-baby reunion that attracted more than 125 "graduates" of the hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Thirteen-year-old Daniel left NICU (pronounced nick-you) with high honors: He is Hopkins' smallest-ever preemie, having weighed in at a feathery 360 grams, just three quarters of a pound.

Hospital names officers for its professional staff Dr. David Nyanjom has been named president of the professional staff at Howard County General Hospital. He is a member of Johns Hopkins Medicine, has been a member of the hospital's medical staff since 1993. Dr. Tuvia Blechman is vice president, and Dr. Bernard Marquis is secretary-treasurer. Blechman, a neonatologist, joined the hospital staff in 1990 as director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Marquis, an anesthesiologist, has been a member of the medical staff since 1991.

The woman who abandoned her newborn daughter under a restroom sink at Northwest Hospital Center in Randallstown last week has been found, Baltimore County police said yesterday. The identity of the woman, who was located Monday morning in Baltimore, was not released at her request. "There will be no charges from Baltimore County in regards to child abandonment," said Cpl. Ron Brooks, a county police spokesman. He added that the mother did not require medical care. The 6-pound, 9 1/2 -ounce African-American girl, nicknamed "Rosie" by Northwest staff, was discovered May 1 by a security guard who was making evening rounds on the hospital's first floor.

State Sen. Larry E. Haines, leader of Carroll's legislative delegation and Senate minority whip, left Anne Arundel Medical Center yesterday afternoon with a near-perfect bill of health, at least as far as his heart is concerned. Haines, a Republican, was hospitalized for almost a day after complaining of severe chest pains Monday evening. "I am doing well, and I am thankful that I have no coronary disease," Haines, 63, said shortly before he was discharged yesterday afternoon. He went to the State House infirmary about 8:45 p.m. Monday and was taken by ambulance to the hospital near Annapolis.

After several inspections, Carroll administrators have pronounced the Jones Building at Springfield Hospital Center in Sykesville suitable to house an urgently needed long-term drug rehabilitation program for county youth. The five-story, all-brick Jones Building, constructed in 1948, needs new heating and air-conditioning systems, but is structurally sound, Ralph Green, county director of permits and inspections, said during a tour Friday. "It has all new windows throughout, and the exterior brick is in fairly good condition.

Worried about rising maintenance costs and the safety of patients and staff, Crownsville Hospital Center officials are lobbying the governor to move forward with construction of the first new building in nearly 50 years at the 90-year-old state psychiatric hospital. Hospital officials were optimistic about getting $994,000 in planning and design money for the project for the 2002 fiscal year -- which begins July 1 -- but say the effort was dealt a major setback when state budget officials delayed the project by a year to July 2002, the start of fiscal year 2003.