Lurie Children's Hospital sees surge in patients at new Chicago building

Executives at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago expected a "bump" in patients when the $855 million hospital opened in June.

They weren't prepared for a mountain.

Since the former Children's Memorial traded its patchwork of aging buildings in Lincoln Park for a new high-rise in Streeterville on June 9, patient volume has surged, more than doubling hospital projections.

The number of patients is up about 16 percent in the first five months, according to hospital data, an increase driven by an influx of children with more acute health problems, including transplant patients, kids with heart problems and others in need of specialized care.

Revenue over that five-month period increased 12.9 percent to $222 million.

"We expected to have a new-hospital bump in (patients). We had a new-hospital mountain," said Michelle Stephenson, Lurie Children's chief patient care services officer and chief nurse executive. "We've had some months where the (number of inpatients) was 24 percent over what we expected. "

To meet the demand, the hospital hired 151 nurses to ensure full coverage, she said.

Those new hires came on top of about three dozen pediatric specialists and department heads Lurie Children's recruited in the run-up to the hospital opening.

Stephenson said the hospital has yet to determine the specific reasons behind the jump in patients, but said data shows it is drawing more children from the collar counties and downstate.

She also cited the location, adjacent to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and Prentice Women's Hospital, which is connected to Lurie via an enclosed skyway.

Moving 31/2 miles south next to Prentice, which sends Lurie about a quarter of its patients, is likely a significant factor in the patient boom, said Jay Warden, a senior vice president at The Camden Group, a consulting firm.

"It used to be a challenge for moms to have a baby transferred to Children's while they had to stay at Prentice until they're discharged," Warden said. "Now it's the best of both worlds for both hospitals."

Warden said hospitals typically get a burst of new patients when they open facilities, in part because of the accompanying marketing and publicity blitz. That's not always the case with children's hospitals, which tend to serve the sickest and smallest of patients who have few other options.

He said limitations at the old hospital likely kept some patients away.

Indeed, Children's Memorial had a listed capacity of 247 beds, but with shared rooms and other factors, executives considered the hospital full at 220 patients, Stephenson said. The Lurie hospital has a capacity of 288 beds in all-private rooms, which it has come close to filling on a few occasions.

One ward that's consistently bursting at the seams is the neonatal intensive care unit, which was built to handle 44 patients but is averaging about 50. Some of the children have been bumped into shared space in the hospital's cardiac care unit, Stephenson said.

As for patients, the new facility has been a hit, with satisfaction scores up an average of 10 percent, hospital officials said.

Tina Sneed, whose 18-year-old daughter Whitney Ballard recently underwent a liver transplant at the hospital, said she's happy with the expanded rooms and new areas for parents.

She and her daughter have made several 7-hour trips from Kentucky in the last 18 months to see specialists, including overnight stays at both facilities.

Her only complaint?

"The waiting room was kind of crowded," she said. "It was nothing too bad, they just have so many (surgeries) going on at the same time we barely had room to move in there."

pfrost@tribune.com

Twitter @peterfrost

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Urlacher fined $21,000 for second horse-collar tackle

Brian Urlacher again has been fined for making a horse-collar tackle. (José M. Osorio, Chicago Tribune / December 6, 2012)

By Vaughn McClure, Tribune reporter

9:59 a.m. CST, December 6, 2012

Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher told the Tribune he was fined $21,000 by the NFL after he made a horse-collar tackle on running back Leon Washington during last Sunday's overtime loss to the Seattle Seahawks.
 
It was the second consecutive week that Urlacher was fined for a horse-collar tackle. He received a $15,750 fine for a horse-collar tackle against Vikings running back Adrian Peterson.
 
A player typically is fined $31,500 for a second offense, but Urlacher said he wasn't fined that amount. He received a letter from the NFL on Wednesday.
 
Urlacher already has appealed the horse-collar tackle against Peterson and plans to appeal the latest fine.
 
"For sure," Urlacher said Thursday. "My last appeal went real good."
 
Urlacher suffered a Grade 2 right hamstring strain against the Seahawks and could miss the rest of the regular season due to the injury. He already has been ruled out of Sunday's matchup with the Vikings.
 
vxmcclure@tribune.com

Twitter@vxmcclure232
 

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Apple to return some Mac production to U.S. in 2013: report

(Reuters) – Apple Inc is planning to bring back some of its production of Mac computers to the United States from China next year, Chief Executive Tim Cook said, according to a report published Thursday.

The company will spend more than $ 100 million to build the computers in the United States, Cook was cited as saying in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek.

“This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people and we’ll be investing our money,” Cook said.

He told NBC in an interview to be aired late Thursday that only one of the existing Mac lines would be manufactured exclusively in the United States.

Higher-tech products are largely made overseas, often in subcontracted factories not owned by the brands whose products they are making.

Cheaper labor costs have been key in encouraging U.S. manufacturers to have move production to China, but with Chinese wage and transport costs increasing, the advantage against the U.S. has narrowed in recent years.

(Reporting by Nicola Leske; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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“Community”: Jason Alexander filming “Crazy” guest spot

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Community” might be losing a Chevy Chase, but it’s gaining a Jason Alexander.

Former “Seinfeld” star Alexander, who played neurotic bumbler George Costanza on the series, will guest-star on the beleaguered NBC comedy, and while the actor is tight-lipped on the details, he promises that the episode will be a doozy.

“Filming a crazy episode of ‘Community’ this week,” the actor tweeted early Tuesday. “Can’t say much about it but it’s a fun one.”

It is not known what role Alexander, who guest-starred on “Two and a Half Men” earlier this year, will play on the series, or if he will appear on more than one episode. A spokeswoman for the NBC series has not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment.

Last month, news broke that Chevy Chase – who plays Pierce Hawthorne on the series – is leaving “Community,” following an ugly standoff with the show’s creator and former showrunner, Dan Harmon, and an incident when he reportedly tossed out the N-word, after complaining about his character’s racism. Chase will appear in most of the episodes of the upcoming fourth season.

“Community” returns to the air February 7.

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Antismoking Outlays Drop Despite Tobacco Revenue

Faced with tight budgets, states have spent less on tobacco prevention over the past two years than in any period since the national tobacco settlement in 1998, despite record high revenues from the settlement and tobacco taxes, according to a report to be released on Thursday.

Paul J. Richards/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

State antismoking spending is the lowest since the 1998 national tobacco settlement.

States are on track to collect a record $25.7 billion in tobacco taxes and settlement money in the current fiscal year, but they are set to spend less than 2 percent of that on prevention, according to the report, by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which compiles the revenue data annually. The figures come from state appropriations for the fiscal year ending in June.

The settlement awarded states an estimated $246 billion over its first 25 years. It gave states complete discretion over the money, and many use it for programs unrelated to tobacco or to plug budget holes. Public health experts say it lacks a mechanism for ensuring that some portion of the money is set aside for tobacco prevention and cessation programs.

“There weren’t even gums, let alone teeth,” Timothy McAfee, the director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said, referring to the allocation of funds for tobacco prevention and cessation in the terms of the settlement.

Spending on tobacco prevention peaked in 2002 at $749 million, 63 percent above the level this year. After six years of declines, spending ticked up again in 2008, only to fall by 36 percent during the recession, the report said.

Tobacco use is the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the United States, killing more than 400,000 Americans every year, according to the C.D.C.

The report did not count federal money for smoking prevention, which Vince Willmore, the vice president for communications at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, estimated to be about $522 million for the past four fiscal years. The sum — about $130 million a year — was not enough to bring spending back to earlier levels.

The $500 million a year that states spend on tobacco prevention is a tiny fraction of the $8 billion a year that tobacco companies spend to market their products, according to a Federal Trade Commission report in September.

Nationally, 19 percent of adults smoke, down from over 40 percent in 1965. But rates remain high for less-educated Americans. Twenty-seven percent of Americans with only a high school diploma smoke, compared with just 8 percent of those with a college degree or higher, according to C.D.C. data from 2010. The highest rate — 34 percent — was among black men who did not graduate from high school.

“Smoking used to be the rich man’s habit,” said Danny McGoldrick, the vice president for research at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, “and now it’s decidedly a poor person’s behavior.”

Aggressive antismoking programs are the main tools that cities and states have to reach the demographic groups in which smoking rates are the highest, making money to finance them even more critical, Mr. McGoldrick said.

The decline in spending comes amid growing certainty among public health officials that antismoking programs, like help lines and counseling, actually work. California went from having a smoking rate above the national average 20 years ago to having the second-lowest rate in the country after modest but consistent spending on programs that help people quit and prevent children from starting, Dr. McAfee said.

An analysis by Washington State, cited in the report, found that it saved $5 in tobacco-related hospitalization costs for every $1 spent during the first 10 years of its program.

Budget cuts have eviscerated some of the most effective tobacco prevention programs, the report said. This year, state financing for North Carolina’s program has been eliminated. Washington State’s program has been cut by about 90 percent in recent years, and for the third year in a row, Ohio has not allocated any state money for what was once a successful program, the report said.

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Clock running out for owners of prime parcels near McCormick Place

The development team behind a long-stalled plan to build hotels and restaurants just north of McCormick Place suffered a serious setback in federal bankruptcy court on Wednesday afternoon.

Judge Jack Schmetterer granted a motion by lender CenterPoint Properties Trust to reject the latest development plan of property owner Olde Prairie Block Owner LLC, which is led by developers Pamela Gleichman, Karl Norberg and Gunnar Falk.

Schmetterer said Olde Prairie failed to show its plans were financially plausible, noting its pledges from investors were highly conditional.

"It's a maybe situation," he said. He gave them 10 days to produce a more solid plan.

"I urge them to take their best shot, because it is the last one they will get," he said. The next hearing is Dec. 17.

Gleichman said she is confident she can get more iron-clad commitments from her team's investment partners within that time frame.

If Schmetterer dismisses the bankruptcy case at the next hearing, it would open the door for a foreclosure auction of the property. This would make it possible for the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the state-city agency that owns McCormick Place, or other parties, to bid for the properties located on the north side of Cermak Road, across the street from the authority's administrative offices and the West Building of McCormick Place.

McCormick Place officials are aiming to vastly expand the amenities surrounding the convention complex to include more hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues and an arena that could host large-scale corporate assemblies and potentially collegiate sports such as DePaul Blue Demons basketball.

DePaul University, which would like to bring its men's basketball back to the city from its current home at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, is weighing a number of sites. McCormick Place and United Center officials have acknowledged talks with the university.

Opposition to an arena on the Olde Prairie blocks surfaced this week, with the Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance writing a letter stating an arena would be out of character in the historic residential area and would create traffic problems. Ald. Robert Fioretti, whose 2nd ward includes McCormick Place, has expressed opposition to an arena on that site as well.

kbergen@tribune.com | Twitter @kathy_bergen

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Jazz legend Dave Brubeck dead

Dave Brubeck, a jazz musician who attained pop-star acclaim with recordings such as "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo a la Turk," died Wednesday morning at Norwalk Hospital, in Norwalk, Conn., said his longtime manager-producer-conductor Russell Gloyd.

Brubeck was one day short of his 92nd birthday. He died of heart failure, en route to "a regular treatment with his cardiologist,” said Gloyd.

Throughout his career, Brubeck defied conventions long imposed on jazz musicians. The tricky meters he played in “Take Five” and other works transcended standard conceptions of swing rhythm.

The extended choral/symphonic works he penned and performed around the world took him well outside the accepted boundaries of jazz. And the concerts he brought to colleges across the country in the 1950s shattered the then-long-held notion that jazz had no place in academia.

As a pianist, he applied the classical influences of his teacher, the French master Darius Milhaud, to jazz, playing with an elegance of tone and phrase that supposedly were the antithesis of the American sound.

As a humanist, he was at the forefront of integration, playing black jazz clubs throughout the deep South in the ’50s, a point of pride for him.

"For as long as I’ve been playing jazz, people have been trying to pigeonhole me,” he once told the Tribune.

"Frankly, labels bore me."

He is survived by his wife, Iola; four sons and a daughter; grandsons and a great granddaughter.

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And the most overpaid actor award goes to: Eddie Murphy

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Eddie Murphy was once among Hollywood’s top box office draws, but he now has the dubious honor of being crowned its most overpaid actor, according to Forbes magazine.

In its annual list, determined by the misalignment between star salaries and their films’ box office take, Murphy, once a one-man gold mine with 1980s hits such as “Trading Places” and “Beverly Hills Cop”, displaced Drew Barrymore for the top spot.

“Murphy‘s career has just collapsed,” Forbes said, citing such recent box office bombs as “Imagine That”, “A Thousand Words” and “Meet Dave”.

Weighing box office receipts against paychecks, Forbes calculated that for every dollar Murphy was paid for his last three films, they returned an average of just $ 2.30 at the box office. Murphy placed second on the list a year ago.

Popular actresses such as Katherine Heigl, and Oscar winners Reese Witherspoon and Sandra Bullock, made the top five, with “returns” ranging from $ 3.40 to $ 5.

Forbes took issue with Witherspoon’s “questionable” choices such as the star-laden, James L. Brooks romantic comedy “How Do You Know”, which was one of 2010′s worst-performing films. It cost $ 120 million, much of which went toward star salaries, but grossed a paltry $ 49 million.

The cast included two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington, as well as actors generally considered solid at the box office such as Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller.

“Washington‘s films do fine at the box office but he can demand an outsized paycheck on those movies,” Forbes noted. His current hit “Flight” was not included for this year’s list.

Washington‘s return was the same $ 6.30 calculated for Sandler, whose comedies Forbes said were consistent performers — except when they’re not, such as the disappointing “Jack and Jill”.

It was the same with Stiller, whom Forbes said “earns so much money per film that one miss can make him seem overpaid. That’s what happened with “Tower Heist”, in which the actor co-starred with — Eddie Murphy.

Will Ferrell, who topped the list for two of the last four years and came in third a year ago, didn’t place.

The full list can be found at www.forbes.com/overpaidactors.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; editing by Patricia Reaney and Andrew Hay)

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Well: For Athletes, Risks From Ibuprofen Use

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Many active people use the painkiller ibuprofen on an almost daily basis. In surveys, up to 70 percent of distance runners and other endurance athletes report that they down the pills before every workout or competition, viewing the drug as a preemptive strike against muscle soreness.

But a valuable new study joins growing evidence that ibuprofen and similar anti-inflammatory painkillers taken before a workout don’t offer any benefit and may be causing disagreeable physical damage instead, particularly to the intestines.

Studies have already shown that strenuous exercise alone commonly results in a small amount of intestinal trauma. A representative experiment published last year found that cyclists who rode hard for an hour immediately developed elevated blood levels of a marker that indicates slight gastrointestinal leakage.

Physiologically, it makes sense that exercise would affect the intestines as it does, since, during prolonged exertion, digestion becomes a luxury, said Dr. Kim van Wijck, currently a surgical resident at Orbis Medical Center in the Netherlands, who led the small study. So the blood that normally would flow to the small intestine is instead diverted to laboring muscles. Starved of blood, some of the cells lining the intestines are traumatized and start to leak.

Thankfully, the damage seems to be short-lived, Dr. van Wijck said. Her research has shown that within an hour after a cyclist finished riding, the stressed intestines returned to normal.

But the most common side-effect of ibuprofen is gastrointestinal damage. And since many athletes take the drug for pain before and after a workout, Dr. van Wijck set out to determine the combined effect of exercise and ibuprofen.

For the new study, published in the December issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands recruited nine healthy, active men and had them visit the university’s human performance lab four times.

During two of the visits, the men rested languorously for an hour, although before one of the visits, they swallowed 400 milligrams of ibuprofen the night before and also the morning of their trip to the lab. (Four hundred milligrams is the recommended non-prescription dosage for adults using the drug to treat headaches or other minor pain.)

During the remaining visits, the men briskly rode stationary bicycles for that same hour. Before one of those rides, though, they again took 400 milligrams of ibuprofen the night before and the morning of their workout.

At the end of each rest or ride, researchers drew blood to check whether the men’s small intestines were leaking. Dr. van Wijck found that blood levels of a protein indicating intestinal leakage were, in fact, much higher when the men combined bike riding with ibuprofen than during the other experimental conditions when they rode or took ibuprofen alone. Notably, the protein levels remained elevated several hours after exercise and ibuprofen.

The health implications of this finding are not yet clear, although they are worrying, Dr. van Wijck said. It may be that if someone uses ibuprofen before every exercise session for a year or more, she said, “intestinal integrity might be compromised.” In that case, small amounts of bacteria and digestive enzymes could leak regularly into the bloodstream.

More immediately, if less graphically, the absorption of nutrients could be compromised, especially after exercise, Dr. van Wijck said, which could affect the ability of tired muscles to resupply themselves with fuel and regenerate.

The research looks specifically at prophylactic use of ibuprofen and does not address the risks and benefits of ibuprofen after an injury occurs. Short-term use of Ibuprofen for injury is generally considered appropriate.

Meanwhile, the Dutch study is not the first to find damage from combining exercise and ibuprofen. Earlier work has shown that frequent use of the drug before and during workouts also can lead to colonic seepage. In a famous study from a few years ago, researchers found that runners at the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run who were regular ibuprofen users had small amounts of colonic bacteria in their bloodstream.

Ironically, this bacterial incursion resulted in “higher levels of systemic inflammation,” said David C. Nieman, a professor of health and exercise science at Appalachian State University who conducted the study and is himself an ultramarathoner. In other words, the ultramarathon racers who frequently used ibuprofen, an anti-inflammatory, wound up with higher overall levels of bodily inflammation. They also reported being just as sore after the race as runners who had not taken ibuprofen.

Animal studies have also shown that ibuprofen hampers the ability of muscles to rebuild themselves after exercise. So why do so many athletes continue enthusiastically to swallow large and frequent doses of ibuprofen and related anti-inflammatory painkillers, including aspirin, before and during exercise?

“The idea is just entrenched in the athletic community that ibuprofen will help you to train better and harder,” Dr. Nieman said. “But that belief is simply not true. There is no scientifically valid reason to use ibuprofen before exercise and many reasons to avoid it.”

Dr. van Wijck agrees. “We do not yet know what the long-term consequences are” of regularly mixing exercise and ibuprofen, she said. But it is clear that “ibuprofen consumption by athletes is not harmless and should be strongly discouraged.”

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South Loop residents oppose DePaul arena

The prospect of a DePaul University men's basketball arena being constructed on land just north of McCormick Place is drawing strong opposition from the Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance, a South Loop residents' organization, according to a letter released Tuesday.
 
A survey of 700 neighbors of the site, conducted by the community group, found more than 70 percent oppose construction of a Blue Demons arena there, Tina Feldstein, president of the organization, stated in the letter.
 
An arena would not fit within the residential and historic character of the area and could put two landmark structures, the Harriet F. Rees House and the American Book Co. building, at risk, the letter stated. It would also add to traffic congestion and potential rowdiness in an area already overburdened when conventions are in progress at McCormick Place or major events, including Chicago Bears games, are taking place at Soldier Field, Feldstein said in an interview.
 
"We're not against vibrant development, which hotel and retail would bring," Feldstein said. And the group would support an arena at an alternate site on the Near South Side, she said.
 
The letter was written in support of an alternate plan for the so-called "Olde Prairie" blocks, which is being put forward in bankruptcy court by developers Pam Gleichman, Karl Norberg and Gunnar Falk. Their plan calls for hotel and retail development on property directly north of the McCormick Place administrative offices and West Building on Cermak Road.
 
If they lose control of the property, it is expected to go up for auction, making it possible for the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the state-city agency that owns McCormick Place, or other parties to make a run at it.
 
DePaul is weighing several sites, including property near McCormick Place and the United Center on the Near West Side. As well, the Allstate Arena in Rosemont is fighting to retain the team.
 
The neighborhood's opposition adds to resistance by Ald. Robert Fioretti, whose 2nd Ward includes McCormick Place.
 "That is not a place to put an arena -- far away from the school," he said. "I think there are traffic issues related, and it would be a bad deal for taxpayers in these economic times."

Fioretti noted such a project likely would require public subsidy.
 
The Olde Prairie blocks have not been officially designated as a potential site for a DePaul arena, but Fioretti said it is his understanding that they are being seriously considered.
 
Jim Reilly, chief executive officer of the exposition authority, known as McPier, has publicly acknowledged that there have been talks with DePaul. A spokeswoman on Tuesday said it would be premature to comment further at this point.

A DePaul spokesperson could not be reached for immediate comment.
 
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said he would like DePaul to bring men's basketball back to the city. A spokesman declined comment beyond that.
 kbergen@tribune.com | Twitter @kathy_bergen

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