Johns Hopkins Medicine

We are hitting two important milestones this month: the one-year anniversary of the official introduction of the House of Representatives health care bill and the awaited passage of comprehensive health care reform legislation. Now, as this exhaustive debate reaches its conclusion, we look back a year, and back 120 years to our founding principles. And hence, we at Johns Hopkins Medicine believe we're affirming a core belief in supporting passage of HR 3590, the Senate's health care reform bill, as well as accompanying legislation that is expected to take the form of a reconciliation bill.

Johns Hopkins Medicine and Flagship Health, a 160-member physician group, announced a plan yesterday to jointly seek managed care contracts.Together, they said, they can offer patients better-coordinated care and insurers efficient management."

Eisner Communications has been named the advertising agency of record to promote Johns Hopkins Medicine, an account that in past years has been valued at $2 million to $3 million in annual billings."

As Helix Health was in negotiations with Johns Hopkins that could merge the state's two largest hospital systems, its president and chief executive officer, James A. Oakey, abruptly resigned, Helix announced yesterday.Oakey is leaving for personal reasons, the Helix announcement said. He will be replaced by Michael R. Merson, a former Helix CEO.Patricia K. Smyth, who chairs the Helix board, said it was "not true at all" that Oakey's departure was related to the talks with Hopkins. She refused further comment on the change in Helix's leadership, saying, "I want to guard Jim Oakey's privacy and that of the board."

A couple who met as Johns Hopkins University undergraduates and went on to earn their medical degrees there have given $10 million in stock and cash to endow the position of medical school dean.Dr. Lenox D. Baker Jr. and Dr. Frances Watt Baker, physicians in Norfolk, Va., announced the gift yesterday at a Baltimore dinner celebrating the second anniversary of the Johns Hopkins Initiative -- a six-year campaign to raise $900 million for the university."It is an extraordinary gift because of its size and because it sends the message that leadership is important," said Dr.William R. Brody, president of the university.

Dr. Nicholas J. Fortuin, a Johns Hopkins Hospital cardiologist who did early research in cardiac ultrasound and was recalled as a gifted teacher, died Sunday near his home in the Caves Valley section of Baltimore County. Family members said he had been bicycling. He was 69. "For generations of cardiology trainees at Hopkins, he came to epitomize clinical judgment and skill, and he brought to their education a healthy skepticism of new fads in a technology-prone specialty," said a close friend, Dr. Thomas Traill, a Hopkins cardiologist.

The NFL needs a "culture change" -- and perhaps major modifications to helmets, injury-reporting procedures and practice rules -- to better protect players from head injuries, two prominent neurosurgeons said Wednesday. "We're at that tipping point where there is probably going to have to be an enormous culture change that occurs that will happen over years," Richard G. Ellenbogen, co-chairman of the NFL's Medical Committee on Head, Neck and Spine, told reporters after a one-day, league-financed educational conference.

At the ding of a cowbell Sunday, staffers in a command center at the Johns Hopkins Hospital began clapping and yelling out victory cheers. Another department had begun to transfer patients as part of a massive move from Hopkins' aging hospital building to a towering $1.1 billion facility next door. The complicated process, which centered on the delicate task of relocating sick patients, was running according to plan. The official opening Tuesday of the two 12-story towers will mark the final step in the largest hospital project in Maryland history.

John Lloyd Bergbower, a Johns Hopkins Medicine security vice president who as a city police commander battled drug buyers in Southwest Baltimore, suffered a fall at his North Baltimore home Sunday and died later that day at Sinai Hospital. He was 60. "He didn't need to run into a burning building or take on an armed gunman to know that John Bergbower was a courageous man," said Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, who served under him in the Southwestern District nearly 15 years ago. "He was a very smart, capable person with an air of confidence about him that made an impression on a young sergeant like myself.

Erectile dysfunction, also known as ED, refers to the inability of the man to obtain and maintain erection of the penis sufficient to permit satisfactory sexual intercourse. About 18 million American men experience erectile dysfunction. Dr. Arthur L. Burnett II, medical director of the Johns Hopkins James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute's Male Consultation Clinic and professor of urology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, discusses causes, effects and treatment of the condition.