Cleveland’s three major hospitals — Cleveland Clinic, MetroHealth System and University Hospitals Case Medical Center — generated headlines in late 2009 when they announced separately that they would create a total of more than 2,000 new jobs in Northeast Ohio in 2010. So how did they do?

Doctors from Akron Children’s Hospital will begin providing specialty pediatric care at MetroHealth System’s main Cleveland campus in January. Akron Children’s specialists will focus on the areas of pediatric cardiology, gastroenterology, cancer and blood disorders, and critical care.

With an expected influx of 32 million new insured patients, thanks to health reform, it’s an understatement to say the U.S. hospital industry is in for big changes. More patients means more opportunities for revenues, but that extra volume also has the potential to stretch hospitals thin and overtax already-burdened clinical staffs.

Medical data management company Explorys Inc. has added three Northeast Ohio hospital systems to its emerging member network that’s aimed at harnessing information from burgeoning electronic records to improve patient outcomes. MetroHealth System and University Hospitals in Cleveland, and Summa Health System in Akron, are joining Cleveland Clinic, the inaugural network member that helped launch Explorys last year.

Cuyahoga County officials are likely to cut the county’s subsidy to the taxpayer-supported MetroHealth System by about 10 percent next year, according to an internal memo sent to the health system’s employees.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson wants Cleveland Clinic officials to reconsider the decision the close the Huron Hospital trauma center.EMS Commissioner Ed Eckart told WKYC that closing the Huron Level II trauma center would have a “tsunami-like” effect on EMS ambulance service. Eckart predicted all response times would be greatly increased and that [...]

Cleveland Clinic’s Huron Hospital is losing its trauma center in a move that concerns some East Side residents but that the Clinic says will strengthen the city’s healthcare system.

MetroHealth System‘s vice president of medical operations has resigned.Sarah Stamp is leaving Cuyahoga County’s safety-net hospital system to “pursue new opportunities for professional growth,” according to an internal memo announcing her departure. A MetroHealth spokeswoman forwarded the memo at the request of MedCity News.The memo, written by COO Dr. Ed Hills, praised Stamp for the [...]

Eighty percent of chief information officers surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers say they’re worried their hospitals won’t be able to meet whatever meaningful use criteria the government sets for electronic medical records systems.Chief information officers at healthcare providers and insurance firms are worried that their organizations won’t be able to win so-called “meaningful use” designation for electronic [...]

Meaningful use.The phrase applied to using electronic health records (EHRs) in ways that raise the quality of healthcare while reducing its cost is striking anxiety in the hearts of hospital chief information officers nationwide.Despite the $22 billion in federal incentives soon to be available to hospitals and doctors’ offices that install and use the [...]