Allina News

[Star Tribune, Mar. 10, 2010] Doug State entered hospice care two years ago knowing exactly how he wanted to die: at home in Cambridge, Minn., with his wife, Carol, and his dog, Teddy.
He got his wish a year ago at age 83, when his failing heart finally stopped just as he was sitting down to [...]

[Star Tribune, Feb. 26, 2010] “I’m celebrating a birthday today for my friend Genard Lane. Actually, we’re toasting his heart, which has reached the ripe old age of 45. And what a heart it is.”
The story began in 1986, when Genard was 47 and his own diseased heart was failing. Things looked so bleak that [...]

[Star Tribune, Feb. 22, 2010] Last summer, Steven Erickson was in such sad shape he could barely make it out to his vegetable garden without huffing and puffing. To combat frequent chest pain, he was popping about 100 nitroglycerin pills every three days or so.
The conundrum facing Erickson’s doctor and many others — finding a [...]

[Minneapolis, Feb. 22, 2010] Everyday choices such as what you eat and whether you exercise directly influence your physiology, brain chemistry and mood, making stress seem insurmountable to some and manageable to others.
Adequate downtime, along with simple choices about food, sleep and exercise directly influence your physiology, brain chemistry, mood and ability to cope with [...]

[Star Tribune, Jan. 29, 2010] If a final health bill passes—and that’s a big if—it’s likely to include a payment formula that would reward efficient, high-quality providers. Leading a coalition of hospitals from the Midwest and Pacific Northwest, Mayo Clinic proposed a radical new payment formula, called a “value index.” Instead of paying the same [...]

[Start Tribune, Jan. 24, 2010] Most Minnesotans can probably relate to the winter morning thought, “I don’t want to get up; I just want to stay snuggled in my warm, cozy bed!” But for people with seasonal affective disorder (SAD), getting out of bed — and all the routines and responsibilities that follow — can [...]

[Star Tribune, Jan. 22, 2010] The testimony of children treated by Sister Kenny has inspired a new play, “Sister Kenny,” at the History Theatre. It tells the story of the pioneering physical therapist who established a clinic in Minneapolis, now called the Sister Kenny Rehabilitation Institute that is part of Allina Hospitals [...]

[Star Tribune, Jan. 15, 2010] Patty Nelson’s phone started ringing at 7 a.m. Thursday. It hasn’t stopped since.
On the second day of her effort to get medical supplies to Haiti from her kitchen table in Aitkin, Minn., she kept getting more offers of help for the tens of thousands of victims of the catastrophic earthquake.
Cassandra [...]

[Star Tribune, Jan. 13, 2010] The economy has funneled thousands of Minnesotans into new jobs or even completely different careers. One of them is Mike Kriegwho was laid off from his job as a Northwest Airlines mechanic in August 2005.
“I had 26 years there. That was all taken away in just one day,” he said. [...]

[Star Tribune, Jan. 12, 2010] Mom was lying unconscious in the closet, stiff and suffering a seizure. The baby was asleep in his crib, and two more little kids were playing upstairs. Nine-year-old Sydney Gifford, of St. Michael, made a split decision: Call 911. Read the full article at startribune.com.

[Star Tribune, Jan. 4, 2010]   Bystanders in White Bear Lake pulled a heart attack victim from a crash, then did CPR until help arrived.
When a 77-year-old White Bear Lake man’s heart stopped beating Saturday night, it couldn’t have happened at a worse place and time: He was behind the wheel of a car that went [...]

[Star Tribune, Jan. 3, 2010] The pandemic of 2009 wasn’t as bad as health officials feared, but it hit the young harder and may be only in a lull.
On Kris Ehresmann’s 2009 calendar, April 23 is marked with two events: “Get haircut. Pandemic begins.”
That was the day Ehresmann, head of Minnesota’s state vaccine program, learned [...]

[Star Tribune, Jan. 1, 2010] In the game of economics, health care systems deploy increasingly sophisticated marketing strategies. One is even giving away Nintendo Wii gaming consoles. It’s one more sign of rising competition among clinics and hospitals to recruit new patients and retain old ones in a saturated Twin Cities market.
“Fairview and Allina go [...]

[Star Tribune, Dec. 29, 2009] High-deductible health insurance and economic uncertainty have combined to create a crush of year-end elective surgeries at area hospitals including several of Allina’s.
At Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, overall surgery volumes have topped 100 a day for the past six weeks, up from the usual 80 a day. Some who [...]

[Star Tribune, Dec. 29, 2009] Many politicians have overcome admissions of addiction or depression, thanks to better understanding of the manageable diseases. Can Dayton, too?
There was a time when the public admission of mental illness could derail a candidate’s political career.
That could still happen to Mark Dayton, the Democratic candidate for governor who went public [...]

[Star Tribune, Dec. 27, 2009] A groundbreaking type of funding is giving a boost to the new Fridley Medical Center, where construction began this month. Under $17 million in new bonding authority it received through the federal stimulus package, Anoka County will in effect transfer some of its bonding, or borrowing, power [...]

[Star Tribune, Dec. 16, 2009] Kathie Shemon, RNC, is a Care Navigator Nurse with Allina Home & Community Services. She talks about her job and how she helps patients find the help they need in the Allina system in an interview on the StarTribune.com Jobs: Healthcare web site. Read the whole Q & A on [...]

[Star Tribune, Dec. 16, 2009]  Gail Roper was fearful of making a scene. Poised on the lip of a pool after swimming laps seven years ago, the former Olympic swimmer “knew something was wrong. It was like I was having an out-of-body experience. But it was scary.”
She crawled out of the pool, rattled. A month [...]

[Star Tribune, Dec. 15, 2009] A developer has proposed a rental housing and retail project for the stalled Ramsey Town Center. Another upcoming Town Center project is a medical clinic to be built by Allina Hospitals and Clinics. Allina plans to break ground next spring on the 23,000-square-foot clinic, which will replace a smaller [...]

[Star Tribune, Dec. 14, 2009] The metro’s first new hospital in a decade will likely need patients— and patience, in this economy. Maple Grove is ”in this for the long run, even if the first few years are rocky,” said a health care analyst.
Allina’s Mercy Hospital is just 10 miles away in Coon Rapids. “We [...]

[Star Tribune, Dec. 9, 2009] On the anniversary of the day she suffered a brain aneurysm, Sandie Birdsall met the police officer, paramedics and emergency medical technicians who rushed to her aid. The gathering was arranged by Allina Hospitals & Clinics, which now operates the Valley-Lakeville-Farmington (ALF) ambulance service. Read the full [...]

[Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dec. 3, 2009] Putting people who “drop dead” from heart attack on ice can spare them brain damage. This doctor is living proof.
Dr. Larry Ebbert likes to say that he just happened to be changing planes in Minneapolis when he dropped dead in June.
That is why he lived to tell the tale.
See [...]

[Star Tribuune, Nov. 30, 2009] The Global Market is part of the huge reclamation project at the once-dilapidated, crime-pocked Chicago-Lake intersection. The market, along with Midtown Global Exchange neighbors Allina Hospitals & Clinics, a Sheraton hotel and adjacent new housing, generates about $2 million annually in property taxes and attracts thousands of visits weekly. Read [...]

[Star Tribune, Nov. 21, 2009] Mammograms are in the spotlight as the uproar continues over how often and at what age women should get them.
In the 1990s, Christine Norton would show up at the annual Twin Cities Women’s Expo for three days in a row to hand out instruction cards on breast self-exams. She was [...]

[Star Tribune, Nov. 7, 2009] For months, travelers have been zooming through the skies, locked into a tight space with strangers, without benefit of an H1N1 vaccination. That situation probably won’t change before Thanksgiving, historically the busiest travel season of the year. The Minnesota Department of Health reports that the majority of doses of the [...]