In Brief: UnitedHealthcare Grants $5.2 Million; HealthSouth To Build New Hospital
UnitedHealthcare Grants $5.2 Million To Providers
UnitedHealthcare has awarded $5.2 million in grants to nine non-profit organizations in California to improve healthcare services and wellness programs.
Among the recipients are the Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital Foundation in Grass Valley, which received $699,500, and the $107,000 to Plumas District Hospital in Quincy.
“This grant from UnitedHealthcare supports our investment in new technologies that is helping us serve rural community clinicsthroughout the region,” said Kimberly Parker, executive director of the Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital Foundation. “These funds arehelping expand our eClinical Works program that enables us to deliver healthcare services to more people in our community, particularly people living in rural areas.”
Plumas District Hospital in Quincy will use its grant to expand educational and outreach services for women diagnosedwith gestational diabetes in the region, officials said.
Since 2008, the Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare has granted $30 million to 53 non-profit providers statewide.
HealthSouth To Build Modesto Hospital
Alabama-based rehabilitation hospital operator HealthSouth has purchased 5.5 acres of land in Modesto with the intent of building a 50-bed hospital.
The facility will be HealthSouth's third in California. It currently operates facilities in Bakersfield and Tustin.
“We have been privileged to serve patients in California since 1995 at our other locations and look forward tooffering high-quality services closer to home for Stanislaus County residents," said Jerry Gray, president of HealthSouth's western region. “This new, state-of-the-art hospital will ensure residents have appropriate andreasonable access to the latest rehabilitative treatment and technology in a hospital setting.”
Construction on the hospital will begin in late 2014, and is expected to open in late 2015.
Lucile Salter, Stanford Receive $6.5 Million NIH Grant
Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital and the Stanford University School of Medicine have received a $6.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to help better predict and fight forms of cancer that strike children who are the recipients of solid organ transplants.
Known as post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder, the affliction is a form of blood cancer that occurs in children who have received ongoing regimens of immunosuppresive drugs in order to fight organ rejection.
The mortality rate of such cancers is as high as 35 percent. Researchers want to create a molecular-based test to better assess disease risk. The study will focus on two different genetic markers that are believed to be linked to the cancer.
“We want to develop assays so that we can identify children who are at risk for PTLD before they even develop the disease,” said Carlos Esquivel, M.D., a liver transplant surgeon at Packard Children’s and chief investigator of the new study.
The study will examine transplant patients at Lucile Salter Packard and four other sites in California, Texas, Nebraska and Florida.
