State investigators found Weiss Hospital lacked supplies, ran "makeshift" ER department, reports say
State records obtained by The Sun-Times showed investigators found the Uptown Hospital was using a "makeshift" emergency department in an office building.
Two doctors and a nurse reportedly told state investigators that it was nearly impossible to treat patients there because it lacked medications, oxygen supplies, and monitoring equipment.
The investigation also found that three patients who went to the hospital in June and July did not get the care they needed.
Starting on Aug. 9, Medicare won't pay Weiss for inpatient services, which the hospital reported received over half of its 2023 revenue from the program, according to the Sun-Times.
This is another setback for the hospital, which suffered a major air-conditioning system failure last month, forcing dozens of patients to be transferred to its sister institution, West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park.
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Yahoo
29 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Your ultimate guide to campus dining at IU Bloomington
Between navigating your class schedule, meeting new people, and learning how to not get lost in Ballantine, figuring out what to eat (and how to pay for it) can feel like its own learning curve. Luckily, the Indiana University Bloomington campus is filled with dining options – from all-you-can-eat dining halls to cafes hidden inside academic buildings. Whether you have a meal plan or not, here's your guide to finding food across campus, so you can spend less time stressing and more time snacking. How dining dollars and meal plans work If you have a meal plan, you will get: Meal Scans for entry into all-you-care-to-eat (AYCTE) dining halls every 10 minutes. Meal Exchanges can be used to get a combo meal at a pay-as-you-go location on campus or can be used to purchase an AYCTE meal at any dining hall for your guest(s). Dining Dollars (like campus cash) can used at cafes, C-stores and even dining halls. Meal Plans are linked to your CrimsonCard, which you will also find you use for building access and printing. If you don't have a meal plan, you can still load money onto your CrimsonCard and use it almost anywhere on campus to pay for food. Dining halls inside the dorms These are the locations that come to mind when it you think of meal scans. All are buffet-style and serve rotating menus: Forest Quad: one of the busiest dining halls on campus – known for it's variety with international dishes, pasta bars, vegetarian options, and frequent themed menu nights. McNutt Quad: the largest and busiest dining hall on campus located in the Northwest neighborhood. Known for being spacious and for its breakfast especially on game days. Wright Quad: a central campus location offering multiple stations from grilled items to sandwiches, a pizza bar and a variety of cuisines. Goodbody Hall: best known for its carry out options and location in the Southeast neighborhood. Collins Living Learning Center (LLC): smaller and cozier, with a community feel and a menu that often highlights vegetarian and sustainable options. Eigenmann Dining (limited hours and days): offering core meals from local restaurants for students to carry-out. All dining halls accept meal scans and are included in the standard IU meal plans. C-Stores: your campus convenience stops When you're out of granola bars or need laundry detergent, IU's campus convenience stores (aka C-stores) have your back. Popular locations include: Briscoe C-Store Mcnutt C-Store Union Street Center C-Store IMU Union Market These mini-stores stock frozen meals, snacks, toiletries, household essentials and quick breakfast items. Most are located inside or near dorms and accept Dining Dollars, Crimson Cash, and credit/debit. Cafes across campus Go beyond Starbucks and discover these locations scattered across academic buildings, these spots are great for a between-class bite or a quick caffeine fix. These include: O'Neill Cafe - located in the O'Neill school, serving coffee and quick snacks. Hodge Cafe - inside the Kelley School of Business you'll find everything from some quick eats and smoothies to sushi and poke bowls. School of Education Cafe - located inside the School of Education you can find a quiet but convenient sit-down spot. Eskenazi Cafe - located inside the art museum, it not only serves a selection of creative bites but is also a good quiet study spot. Ballantine Hall Cafe - a limited but convenient spot for students wanting to grab a quick snack between lectures and classes. Godfrey Cafe - tucked into the Godfrey Graduate & Executive Center it is a spot often used by graduate students. What's inside the IMU The IMU is IU's central hub – and it doubles as a food court. It's got everything from fast food to pastries to dishes from cuisines across the world: Starbucks - full-service and open early, making it a busy location and a morning hotspot for students. The Globe - a rotating international menu that changes everyday (think: tacos, butter chicken, noodles). Quarry Pie Co. - a selection of pizzas with customizable toppings. The Mix - build-your-own grain bowls, salads, and wraps with fresh ingredients. Sugar & Spice - from giant cookies, to muffins and ice cream from the Chocolate Moose they've got it all. Whitfield Grill - a classic diner-inspired menu with options ranging from burgers, chicken sandwiches, hot dogs, fries and more. Lantern Cafe - a Pan-Asian style street station featuring wings, sushi and a variety of Pan-Asian inspired meals. The Vault Pub - a modern pub-style restaurant that are especially well known for their burgers and flatbreads. Tudor Room - a formal, buffet-style dining room with an exquisite brunch menu. It's a great location for special events or for visiting family who would like to experience IU's traditions. The IMU has options no matter what you are craving and is also a great location in between classes when you can't make your way to a dining hall. Vending machines: the unsung heroes From snacks to supplies, vending machines are scattered throughout campus. You'll find them in residence halls, academic buildings, study lounges and even libraries with them all accepting both your CrimsonCard and credit/debit. Stock often includes snacks, soda, energy drinks, over-the-counter medication and stationery. What's new this fall IU is renovating two dining spots with opening dates scheduled for this fall: Read Dining Hall (Southeast neighborhood) - a third Starbucks location and another Poke by Sushi King will be opening up and replacing the previous AYCTE system. Bookmarket Eatery (Wells Library) - will be reopening in a similar style to the IMU with brand-new options. Students will be able to enjoy made-to-order smoothies and bowls from Blenz Bowls, a King's Hawaiian chicken concept and more. Keep an eye on RPS updates and check menus using the IU Dining website or the Grubhub app (yes, IU dining is on Grubhub). IU gives you no shortage of places to eat, snack, caffeinate, or grab something fast before your next class. Whether you're a meal plan regular or a campus cafe explorer, you're guaranteed to finding your favorite spot. So go ahead – try something new, learn which dining halls have the best cookies, and which vending machines are closest to you. Your college experience isn't just about lectures and textbooks, instead it starts with good meals, coffee, and the places you will soon find being your favorite hangout spots. Contact Ayzah Khan at AKhan@ This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Where to eat on campus at IU Bloomington: ultimate guide Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
29 minutes ago
- Yahoo
IVF stories once stayed private. Now creators are sharing the highs and heartbreaks online.
Building online communities, one shot at a time. After multiple pregnancy losses and failed rounds of in vitro fertilization (IVF), Cheryl Dowling was in "one of the hardest periods of my life" when she started sharing her journey on social media. 'Infertility was consuming every aspect of my life, yet no one around me seemed to see or understand the weight of it,' she tells Yahoo. "I realized I needed connection and a place to process everything." Thanks to her health platform and community, the IVF Warrior, Dowling has since become something of a celebrity in the infertility space, writing a book on the topic (Unspoken: The Unbearable Weight of Infertility) and racking up 127,000 Instagram followers. 'When I finally began sharing, the response was overwhelming,' she says. 'I quickly saw how many others were struggling, often feeling the same complicated mix of emotions.' Even though infertility impacts one in six people globally, 10% to 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, and nearly 100,000 babies annually are born via IVF in the U.S., there still remains stigma attached to fertility treatments and infertility. That stigma, and the silence that generally surrounds it, may be why so many couples, and in particular women, are now turning to social media and podcasting to find community, share their stories of IVF and inspire and bond with others in turn. 'When I started sharing, the conversation was much quieter,' Dowling notes. 'Now there is much more awareness.' 'There's definitely been a shift toward openness, which is encouraging,' says writer and creative strategist Kate Parfet, who has shared her struggles with endometriosis and infertility with her followers. 'People are sharing details that once would've been brushed off or kept private. That visibility matters. But the stigma hasn't disappeared.' Why they share As for why those who share choose to break those stigmas and raise their voices, particularly during a moment of such vulnerability, the answer really seems to be about isolation and a search for connection. 'It started really organically,' says Demi Schweers, who, along with her husband, Tom, has documented the couple's journey to becoming parents via IVF. 'I was in the thick of it, feeling alone, overwhelmed and confused, and I realized if I'm feeling this way, there have to be others who are too.' The Schweerses now have more than 2 million followers on TikTok, many of whom are there for frank conversations about the often challenging road to pregnancy. 'There weren't many spaces where I saw other women who looked like me talking openly about infertility or PCOS. So I decided to create it.' Abbe Feder and her husband started the award-winning IVF podcast Maculate Conception. 'When we were in the thick of the hardest years of our six‑year infertility struggle, we didn't intend to go public — it was more that we desperately needed a place to unload," she tells Yahoo. "We'd been through so many failed cycles, miscarriages, doctor visits, late‑night tears ... and even the people closest to us seemed exhausted. So we turned to our handy-dandy recorder. We had no intention of becoming voices in the infertility community. But as we kept documenting our experience — fear, fury, hope, heartbreak — it became clear that others were craving exactly that: honesty, validation, connection.' Actress Laura Orrico began posting about her life a decade ago when her husband was diagnosed with brain cancer. He died in 2015; 10 years later, she is now in her second trimester at 48 years old, thanks to a successful round of IVF done with her late husband's sperm. Her choice to share this next stage in her journey also came from a hope for connection. 'Just a few days before I went for my IVF procedure, I decided I would share,' she says. 'I figured, if I can help other women make this difficult decision, or inspire them to go through it alone, or at an older age, or after getting widowed. ... There's so many components to my story that I figure in some way, shape or form, it's going to help somebody.' The anxieties around sharing Having these frank conversations online comes with insecurity and anguish over how to share the lows alongside the highs. 'In the beginning I felt a lot of pressure to constantly show up, even on days I was struggling," Dowling says. "I thought I had to be strong for everyone else, even when I was breaking inside. Over time I learned how to balance showing up with protecting my boundaries.' Orrico worried about sharing more than she was comfortable with. 'Getting through the first several weeks of appointments, I was nervous to post anything until I got to my next marker,' she says. 'I promised everybody I would share this publicly no matter what happened or happens,' she adds. 'There's a kind of grief and unraveling that can feel too raw to put into words, especially in real time. There were stretches when I didn't feel steady enough to speak from inside the experience, only around it,' says Parfet, adding that finding the right care team helped her to move through those feelings and find her voice. 'It reminded me that our stories don't need to be sanitized or made palatable to be worth sharing.' Having these candid conversations also often means sharing things you never thought you'd go through. 'One of the hardest things we ever shared publicly was our experience with TFMR (termination for medical reasons), which is a clinical euphemism for abortion,' says Feder. After years of failed IVF procedures, Feder became pregnant with three embryos. 'Because of serious health risks to me and to the other babies, we had to make the impossible decision to 'reduce' to two." That, she notes, was another euphemism. "It was an abortion. And it was heartbreaking.' She says the decision to share that part of their story with her podcast audience was incredibly difficult, but it felt important to be transparent. 'It was my husband, Isaac, who said, 'We have to talk about this. People need to understand that abortion is part of fertility care. That it's not black-and-white. That it's health care,'' Feder recalls. 'And he was right.' For many creators, IVF does eventually result in having a child. Some of them worry that they're sending the message that overcoming infertility is inevitable. 'Fertility stories often get flattened into neat arcs: pain, persistence, resolution. But that's not how most people live them,' says Parfet, who is now a mother after years of trying to conceive. 'Now that I have a child, I sometimes wonder if my voice is still one people want or need to hear. I question whether my experience feels too far removed from the uncertainty so many are still living inside.' 'People often see the highlight reel, the success stories, the 'happy ending,' but not the trauma, the cost or the long road that came before,' says Schweers, now a mom of two. 'When I got pregnant or shared a moment of joy, I worried it might hurt someone who was still waiting for their turn. I never want anyone to feel like I've forgotten what it's like to be in that place of waiting and longing.' A caveat Dr. Iris Insogna of Columbia University Fertility Center, a reproductive endocrinologist, says many of her patients mention IVF influencers and the positive impact they've had in terms of reducing the stigma of fertility treatment. That said, "I do caution people to interpret what they learn online carefully,' Insogna tells Yahoo. 'Not every journey is the same, and each individual will have a different path. Ultimately, decisions about medical care should be made between the patient and the provider, not based on information from social media.' Feder is also quick to remind her followers that she's not a medical professional. 'So many people are desperate for answers, they might follow influencers who aren't medical experts and end up getting harmful or misleading advice,' she says. The IVF landscape moving forward While the conversations around IVF continue to change, the costs associated with the procedures are still prohibitive for many, if not most, patients. IVF is not universally covered by insurance companies, and in many cases is still highly politicized. Furthermore, fertility care often does not address how emotionally grueling the treatments can be. 'Clinics and media often focus on the physical treatments and outcomes, while the mental and emotional impact is still overlooked,' says Dowling. 'Many people, especially women, still feel blamed or judged for needing medical help to build their families.' Creating a platform for this emotional care is at the heart of what so many of these influencers do. 'Mostly, it's about making people feel less invisible,' Parfet says about sharing her experience with both IVF and endometriosis. 'As a woman of color, I know firsthand how isolating and confusing it can be to navigate these spaces where our stories often aren't centered,' adds Schweers. 'I always come back to: Will this help someone feel less alone? If the answer is yes, I try my best to be brave and share it.' Feder agrees, with an added reminder for anyone who is considering sharing their own experiences with infertility and IVF. 'There can be a pressure to perform your pain — to package trauma into a neatly digestible narrative,' she says. 'Social media often rewards vulnerability, but sometimes at the cost of boundaries. I remind people often that you don't owe anyone your story — it's up to you to decide what's best for you.' Solve the daily Crossword
Medscape
30 minutes ago
- Medscape
Cardio Procedures Are Moving Out of Hospitals. Is That Good?
The way cardiovascular care is delivered in the US is changing rapidly. Procedures once limited to hospitals are now increasingly performed in outpatient clinics such as ambulatory surgery centers and office-based laboratories (OBLs). In 2022, 65% of outpatient peripheral vascular interventions in Medicare beneficiaries were performed in OBLs. The volume of procedures done in ASCs is projected to rise by 21% by 2034, according to a recent analysis published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology . 'Cardiovascular procedures that were traditionally thought of as only being able to be performed in the hospital setting are increasingly performed in a safer manner such that their conduct in facilities outside of hospitals is not only possible but being encouraged in many ways,' said Robert Yeh, MD, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, Boston. Financial Incentives Driving the Shift For the study, Yeh and his colleagues examined the regulatory and financial drivers behind the shift in procedural geography. They found that much of the growth in outpatient clinics has been driven by financial consideration. Federal policy and payer incentives have fueled much of the move toward outpatient cardiovascular care. Starting in the mid-2000s, Medicare expanded the list of procedures reimbursed in ambulatory settings, including device implantation and peripheral vascular interventions. In 2020, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also began covering coronary stenting in ASCs, projecting $20 million in savings if just 5% of cases shifted out of hospitals. Third-party payers often follow Medicare's lead, Yeh said, 'so there's an incentive to promote that care.' Physicians themselves also have an incentive to perform procedures in outpatient clinics. ASCs and OBLs are often physician-owned and so provide a way to reclaim some financial autonomy at a time when physician-owned practices are in decline and hospital employment is becoming more common. Private equity groups and even hospitals themselves are increasingly investing as partners in outpatient clinics, seeing them as a growing revenue stream, Yeh said. Patients See Convenience and Access The shift to outpatient clinics has clear benefits for patients as well. 'Patients' journey through healthcare has never been easy. Many hate having to go to the hospital, dealing with parking and a big, confusing building,' said Mustafa Husaini, MD, chair of the American College of Cardiology Cardiovascular Management Council. They much prefer having procedures done at ASCs and OBLs, which are faster, more efficient, and often closer to home, he said. And OBLs in particular can enhance access to care for underserved communities, said Yeh, with those undergoing peripheral vascular intervention in OBLs more likely to be Black individuals and of lower socio-economic status than those treated in hospitals. 'If we can increase access to high-end procedures that's an inherent good,' Yeh said. 'There's an opportunity to meet patients where they are.' Questions Remain on Safety and Oversight While advances in technology have made cardiovascular procedures safer outside the hospital, gaps remain in ensuring consistent standards of care. Few data exist on complication rates and adverse events in ASCs and OBLs, or on what the outcome of those complications are — whether they are dealt with at the clinic or require hospital support, for example. 'In the hospital-based world we have a robust network of quality registries which ensure a very high level of care and help identify where gaps exist,' Yeh said. 'In the ASC or OBL setting we don't have that same rigorous data collection system to understand how patients are doing in these settings.' Yeh and his colleagues suggest developing that system is an important step in ensuring that the right patients are treated at outpatient clinics. 'We need better guidelines, so we don't leave it up to patients and physicians,' he said. 'We need more data and collaborative action to develop and adopt those guidelines.' Yeh and Husaini reported no relevant financial conflicts of interest.
