Howard County General

HOWARD COUNTY General Hospital, which recently has been going through a period of expansion and reorganization aimed at building its reputation and standing among community facilities, was dealt a blow last week that should not be underestimated.The broadside comes in the form of an $80 million federal lawsuit filed by Dr. Kline A. Price, a Columbia gynecologist. He is alleging that he was improperly suspended from the hospital, in part because he is black.In his suit, Dr. Price contends not only that he was mistreated by his fellow physicians, but that some of them made serious errors that were ignored.

Robert A. Makofski, a retired Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory scientist and administrator who headed Howard County General Hospital's board, died of cancer Dec. 25 at Pen Bay Medical Center in Rockport, Maine. The former Columbia resident was 81. Born in Wanamie, Pa., he was the son of a coal mine fireman and a homemaker. "His father would not let him visit the coal mine until he had graduated college," said his wife, the former Cathy Lickteig. "His father did not want him to work in the mines.

Howard County General Hospital formally became a member of Johns Hopkins Medicine yesterday, unveiling a modified name and new logo.The hospital will be known as "Howard County General Hospital: A Member of Johns Hopkins Medicine."The announcement cements a partnership that officials say will allow the 233-bed Columbia hospital to improve facilities and expand services as it begins developing clinics throughout the county.As part of the deal, Hopkins will assume $57 million in Howard County General debt and put $40 million into a new foundation, which will fund a range of health services, including dental and teen-age pregnancy and disease prevention programs.

U.S. 1 in Howard County gets you from Elkridge to Laurel, from the White Elk Motel to the Fat Daddy Saloon, with an array of industrial and office parks, homes, fast-food restaurants, storage places and gas stations in between. The strip is looking better in recent years, sprouting new developments with names like Elkridge Crossing, Howard Square and Ashbury Courts, but it's still a work in progress. The county's planning department has a vision of what that 11-mile stretch along Howard's eastern edge could be, and has included these notions in the proposed master plan for growth to be presented to the County Council for the first time Monday night.

Howard County General Hospital has received the highest form of accreditation from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, the country's predominant, standards-setting health care group.For the first time in the hospital's 25-year history, Howard County General earned accreditation with commendation, awarded to hospitals that "demonstrate exemplary performance overall," according to JCAHO. Though the hospital had been accredited at least a half-dozen times before, it had never reached this level, said Howard County General President and CEO Victor A. Broccolino.

For Dr. Henry M. Seidel, the announcement that Johns Hopkins Medicine is taking over Howard County General Hospital came as a poignant reunion of the past and the present.Twenty-five years ago, he came from Baltimore to Columbia -- then a city of barely 6,000 -- to work with a small group of Hopkins doctors at the community hospital off Cedar Lane. Eventually Hopkins withdrew and the entity became Howard County General.This week, Seidel stood in the hospital's ambulatory wing watching the presidents of the two entities shake hands on the $142 million deal.

Through almost 20 years of continuous growth, the grounds surrounding Howard County General Hospital, off Cedar Lane in Columbia, have featured a disconcerting set of landmarks: construction trailers. Residents of the neighborhood say they love all the improvements that have come at the hospital, but they are getting a little impatient about the trailers. Some who live in the Barnside community across the street feel that the trailers detract from the aesthetics of new facilities the hospital has built - the smooth facade of the new emergency room, for example, and the lobby's portico.

Howard County General Hospital is growing up.What began as a 59-bed, short-term care facility in 1973 has grown into a 213-bed comprehensive, acute-care medical center, equipped with some of the latest in technology, such as lasers and magnetic resonance imaging.Last year, the Columbia hospital hired its first, full-time fund-raising executive, Sharon L. Akers.As the chief operating officer and director of development, Ms. Akers oversees the Howard Hospital Foundation, a nonprofit fund-raising organization whose main goal is to raise $5 million for the hospital's first endowment fund.

ONE FEAR expressed when Howard County General Hospital agreed three months ago to a merger with Johns Hopkins Medicine was that it would be consumed by the behemoth and lose its local character. In announcing the completion of the deal last week, the principals sought to erase that concern by announcing that the name of the hospital won't change. Howard General will remain Howard General, but the Johns Hopkins logo will be added to its stationery and signs.That little concession can go a long way toward smoothing the transition into "a member of Johns Hopkins Medicine."

Howard County General Hospital is scheduled to begin construction this fall on an $85 million project that will add a four-story patient tower and a 660-space parking garage in what will be its biggest expansion - in size and budget - to date. The face-lift will give almost every patient a private room, hospital officials said this week. It also will include major renovation in the Columbia hospital's existing space and will push capacity to 228 inpatient beds from 186, easing emergency room crowding and preparing the medical center for a surge in aging baby boomers.

More than 500,000 people have knee replacements each year, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Dr. Daniel Tang, an orthopedic surgeon at Howard County General Hospital, discusses the purpose of and the procedures involved in the surgery. The purpose of a knee replacement is to relieve a person's pain, restore movement, restore alignment and remove the impairments to activities of daily living. The ideal candidate for a knee replacement is a generally healthy individual who has failed conservative management of arthritis and who is past the age of 60. Persons with issues of diabetes, peripheral vascular disease and obesity have increased risk factors for the replacement of a joint.

Calendar 50+EXPO : The Howard County Department on Aging will sponsor a 50+ EXPO from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday at Wilde Lake High School, 5460 Trumpeter Road, Columbia. The expo features more than 140 exhibitors, workshops, a health fair, food, entertainment and free shuttle service from The Mall in Columbia. A live benefit auction will start at 2:30 p.m. Admission is free. For information, go to the Office on Aging Web site at howardcountyaging.org or call 410-313-6410 or TTY: 410-313-5927.

The medical director of Howard County General Hospital issued his own warning last week to those who think they have contracted swine flu. "Don't panic," said Dr. Walter Atha. "Just because we've labeled it the swine flu, it's usually not any different than the regular flu." County and hospital officials held a news conference Thursday in hopes of cutting down the number of people coming to the emergency room because of flu symptoms. Atha said that since the end of the summer, the number of pediatric flu cases being seen in the emergency room has doubled to more than 100 a month.

Congestive heart failure refers to a large number of conditions that affect the structure or function of the heart, making it more difficult for the heart to supply sufficient blood flow to meet the body's needs. Dr. Michael E. Silverman of Cardiovascular Specialists of Central Maryland and chief of medicine at Howard County General Hospital writes about the causes of and treatments for the problem. * Congestive heart failure occurs when one or more of the heart's chambers loses the ability to maintain proper blood flow.

Officials at Howard County General Hospital, in what they said was a milestone for the area, yesterday dedicated the hospital's first in-patient hospice suite.Now, instead of traveling to Baltimore City for hospice care, terminally ill patients and their families can stay in a comfortable two-bedroom suite in the hospital."We've been waiting for this suite for a long time," said Dr. Nicholas Koutrelakos, an oncologist. "It's a celebration."Hospital officials said the $36,000 suite, which took six months to build, had been planned for about two years.

Howard County General Hospital is scheduled to begin construction this fall on an $85 million project that will add a four-story patient tower and a 660-space parking garage in what will be its biggest expansion - in size and budget - to date. The face-lift will give almost every patient a private room, hospital officials said this week. It also will include major renovation in the Columbia hospital's existing space and will push capacity to 228 inpatient beds from 186, easing emergency room crowding and preparing the medical center for a surge in aging baby boomers.