Feds challenge Ohio hospital merger

Meanwhile, the Connecticut Mirror reports on the challenges involved in maintaining a pediatric program at a general hospital.

The New York Times: Trade Commission Challenges A Hospital Merger
Obama administration officials have been roaming the country, talking up their vision of a future in which doctors and hospitals team up to provide better care at lower cost. But a starkly different picture is unfolding this summer in a courtroom here, where lawyers from the Federal Trade Commission have been challenging a hospital merger in Toledo, Ohio (Pear, 8/21).

The Connecticut Mirror: General Hospitals Increasingly Seek Specialists For Children's Care
Some of it is rooted in progress: Many of the illnesses that once put children in the hospital are being prevented through immunization. Others can be managed or treated on an outpatient basis. Only 5 percent of children end up in the hospital in a given year, most before turning 1, said Lawrence McAndrews, president and CEO of the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions. That means it takes a larger population base for a general hospital to run a pediatrics program with enough volume to be economically viable and to keep up the staff's expertise, he said (Levin Becker, 8/22).