No one doubts Edward Hospital CEO Pam Davis' credentials as a tough customer.
In 2003, she wore an FBI wire while meeting with thugs affiliated with the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board so the feds could get dirt on corrupt officials seeking kickbacks from the state's “certificate of need” healthcare construction-approval process.
Former Bear Stearns & Co. Managing Director Nicholas Hurtgen pleaded guilty to a role in the scheme, and the trail of corruption led all the way up to then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich. While Hurtgen eventually withdrew his plea and all charges against him were quietly dropped, Blagojevich is now serving a 14-year prison term after being convicted on 18 charges.
The Facilities Planning Board was dissolved and replaced with an entity hoped to be harder to buy off. And, for reporters, Davis became a go-to source when seeking a critical voice against the certificate-of-need process. She also went on to become an ABC person of the week and Naperville American Legion Post No. 43's Citizen of the Year.
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Pathologists are integrated thoroughly into patient care at Cooper University Hospital, Camden, N.J., and this is by design—architectural design, that is.
The new $163.7 million Roberts Pavilion at Cooper was one of 105 entries in the 27th annual Modern Healthcare Design Awards contest. It was one of 11 winning designs, and EwingCole architects took home a Citation award for their work. What caught my attention, however, was that the architects said that special care was taken to locate the "clinical and anatomic pathology departments to enhance increased involvement of pathologists in the patient treatment stream, a fundamental shift in the role of pathology."
"We love it, it's gorgeous," said Dr. Roland Schwarting, Cooper's pathology department chairman and chief. "What I love about it is it's an integrated design.”
Schwarting explained how, typically, pathology departments and hospital laboratories are fragmented into various silos, hindering communication and collaboration. He said that on paper, it would amount to a very confusing "spaghetti diagram," with arrows pointing every which way to connect the various functions. One can still use a spaghetti diagram to illustrate the department's operation at Cooper, but "the noodles are not as long," Schwarting said.
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