News and notes from a day in MedCity, Ohio:
Cuyahoga County is close to a land deal that could keep a proposed medical mart off Cleveland’s downtown Mall, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. By next week, the county could sign an option to buy an office building and parking garage for the mart.
Jewish Hospital and Mercy Health Partners in Cincinnati said Thursday they would accept a two-month delay in their merger, setting a “firm closing date” of March 1 with the expectations that the University of Cincinnati and University Hospital could find new partners by then, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Dr. Patrick McCarthy, a well-known heart surgeon formerly of the Cleveland Clinic, who now is at the center of a rift with a colleague that has gained national attention, is staying at Northwestern Memorial Hospital despite courting other academic hospitals in the last year about possibly leaving the Chicago medical center, according to the Chicago Tribune.
A recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration safety alert recommending that hospitals using System 1, a STERIS Corp. medical instrument sterilizer, find alternatives to the system, “blindsided the company,” said Daniel Owczarski, a device analyst at Avondale Partners who covers STERIS, according to FDA News.
Ohio ranked in the top half of states for the ability of its public health system to handle emergencies, though public-health capacity is declining across the country, according to a HealthDay report in BusinessWeek.
Several Ohio hospitals were listed among 45 of the nation’s best for health information technology quality by Health IT watchdog group Leapfrog, according to Healthcare IT News.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The Technology Transfer Office at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland recently hosted a 10-person delegation from Italy, according to the university’s news blog.
