Jim O
Payday loans and instant cash advance. Get your first payday loan. Cash advance loans do not require any faxing.
BRIDGETON • Officials at the new 60-bed SSM Rehabilitation Hospital hope that it will become a regional center for the treatment of brain and spinal cord injuries.
Doug Brewer, president and chief executive of SSM-Select Rehabilitation, says the hospital brings together several services that previously were provided at other SSM sites, and the hospital also has all new equipment to help improve the rehab services offered by SSM.
Brewer said the hospital would focus particularly on helping those with brain or spinal cord injuries, in addition to providing a variety of other rehab services.
The $23 million Rehabilitation Hospital on the campus of DePaul Health Center, 12380 DePaul Drive in Bridgeton, began accepting its first patients this week. The three-story, 66,914-square-foot hospital was built over the past 18 months and has opened on schedule.
“I think we can all agree that this building has exceeded our expectations,” Brewer said at a dedication ceremony last week.
“Yes,” he added, “it’s a beautiful building, but exceptional, compassionate care for patients cannot be faked, and that’s what we’ll strive to provide here.”
The new hospital features these amenities:
• Therapy gyms on the third and fourth floors with ceiling-to-floor windows that provide a panoramic view of nearby interstates 70 and 270 and St. Charles Rock Road. Brewer said viewing the hustle and bustle outside can help stimulate those with certain types of brain injuries and hasten their recovery.
• Private, windowless therapy and consultation rooms for those whose injuries respond best to very little outside stimulation.
• Brightly lit patient rooms and hallways designed to look more like a hotel than a hospital. Large photos of St. Louis-area attractions hang in each patient’s room. Brewer said most patients will be at the hospital for at least two weeks or much longer, so designers tried to make the rooms as inviting as possible without forgetting the facility’s medical mission.
• A large dining area with both indoor and outdoor seating.
• An outdoor ambulation course for patient therapies.
• A courtyard for use by patients and their families.
• Nurses’ stations facing large windows on the nearby therapy gyms and therapy rooms, giving workers a good view and allowing them to respond quickly to any emergencies credit reports free.
The new hospital also houses the SSM Day Institute, a specialized outpatient program for people who are recovering from a traumatic injury or illness but who no longer require 24-hour nursing or acute rehabilitation care.
The hospital opened with about 150 employees and will employ 250 when it reaches full occupancy. SSM Rehabilitation Hospital is operated by SSM-Select Rehab LLC, a joint venture of SSM Health Care-St. Louis and Select Medical, which is based in Mechanicsburg, Pa.
David Chernow, Select Medical’s president and chief development and strategy officer, said he was excited about the new hospital and all of its new equipment and technology.
“But it will be the patients’ experience itself that they and their family members will remember the most after they go home,” he said.
“Our mission is to help them regain their independence. Truly, we will improve their quality of life.”
Chris Gonzalez, the hospital’s director of rehabilitation, said, “One area that will differentiate us is our care of people who have dual diagnoses — a spinal cord injury and a brain injury. Many times when there are traumatic injuries, especially in car accidents, both of these injuries occur.”
The brain injury rehab program is being relocated from St. Mary’s Health Center in Richmond Heights to the new hospital. The SSM Rehabilitation network will continue to operate general inpatient rehab programs at both St. Mary’s and St. Joseph Health Center in St. Charles.
Dan Blaker, vice president of design and construction for Select Medical, said the new hospital looks in many ways like other medical facilities Select Medical has helped build in recent years.
“We basically incorporated rehab design features that we have incorporated over a number of years at other facilities,” he said.
He said the SSM Rehabilitation Hospital site was somewhat unusual in that it is long and narrow and on a hilltop. So the hospital was built with long hallways to fit the terrain.
Alberici Constructors Inc. was the general contractor on the project, and Stock and Associates were consulting engineers.
Google searches just got more personal.
The Internet search giant is now sorting through photos and posts from its social network Google+ in its quest to provide the best search results
Metropolitan Urological Specialists PC offers a full spectrum of urological services. The medical practice includes these doctors:
The Senate unanimously approved tough new sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank amid fears of Tehran developing a nuclear weapon.
The 100-0 vote Thursday was for an amendment to the defense bill. Lawmakers had argued that concerns about a nuclear-armed Iran outweighed reservations about driving up oil prices and hurting Americans at the gas pump.
Sens. Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Mark Kirk of Illinois offered the amendment that would target foreign financial institutions that do business with the Central Bank of Iran, barring them from opening or maintaining correspondent operations in the United States easy payday loans. It would apply to foreign central banks only for transactions that involve the sale or purchase of petroleum or petroleum products.
Administration officials cautioned that driving up oil prices could mean more money for Iran.
Plans are afoot to redevelop another of downtown’s biggest empty buildings.
A group of real estate investors from New York and Indiana want to buy the Chemical Building, at Eighth and Olive streets, and turn it into street-level retail and 120 apartments, according to Alderman Phyllis Young.
LandWhite Developers LLC is behind the $34 million project, said Young. They’re seeking $4.2 million in tax increment financing to help fund the deal, and would like to start work next year. An aldermanic committee approved the TIF on Wednesday; it will now go on to the full board.
Jay Landesman, a principal at LandWhite, declined to comment until more details are ironed out.
While the building was nearly half-occupied as recently as 2006, it has sat empty since as redevelopment efforts stalled paperless payday loans. In that year, a Los Angeles-based investment group bought it for $6 million, re-christened it the Alexa, and envisioned luxury condominiums. They filed for bankruptcy protection in 2010, and Centrue Bank foreclosed on the building in March. It is listed for sale at $3.9 million.
Developers are also moving forward with plans to redevelop two other major empty buildings downtown: The Jefferson Arms, on Tucker Boulevard, and one of the Cupples Station warehouse buildings.
Libya’s transitional government was sworn in Thursday before the country’s interim leader, another step in the oil-rich country’s roadmap to elections next year.
Starting with Prime Minister Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib, each minister faced the transitional council’s leader, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, placed his hand on a Quran and swore to “remain loyal to the goals” of the revolution that overthrew longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Each shook Abdel-Jalil’s hand as he stood in front of two national flags, and some also embraced him.
The country faces huge challenges now, but el-Keib said he and his ministers were “upbeat” and optimistic about leading Libya toward elections by next June.
“We are looking forward to having an exciting seven months ahead of us, with lots of things to do and hopefully good results,” el-Keib said.
The lineup of relative unknowns, almost all of them older men, will confront daunting challenges, like establishing control over the fractured nation after the ousting of Gadhafi’s 42-year regime, along with building up state institutions practically from scratch.
El-Keib pledged to represent the interests of all Libyans.
“I am a son of all Libyans,” he said. “I will represent everyone and share wealth with everyone.”
The transitional Cabinet includes 24 ministers, though several, including the defense minister, were missing from Thursday’s ceremony. The prime minister explained that they were out of Tripoli, some of them attending to personal preparations in their hometowns before taking up their new posts.
Among the institutions that must be built is a justice system that will be able to put on trial two key members of the Gadhafi regime _ Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the dictator’s recently captured son and one-time heir-apparent, and the ex-intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi.
The International Criminal Court has charged them both with crimes against humanity for alleged atrocities committed during the recent civil war.
Libyan authorities insist the be tried in Libya, and not at the court in The Hague, Netherlands, a decision aimed at asserting their national authority. However, they have promised to work with the ICC and with the United Nations in investigating the alleged crimes.
ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told The Associated Press on Thursday that the court received the formal pledge of cooperation in a letter from Abdul-Jalil, the NTC chairman.
Moreno-Ocampo said he was satisfied with that move, which appeared to settle a dispute between the international court and Libyan authorities over which body should try Seif al-Islam Gadhafi.
Moreno-Ocampo said the most important thing is for “face of the old regime” to face justice.
It “is very important for the world and for Libya to understand what happened here, how they attacked these people, how they killed these people,” Moreno-Ocampo said.
He said investigations are under way into the alleged crimes committed by Gadhafi’s son and that he believed it would be ready for trial “in a few months.”
Seif al-Islam was captured on Saturday and is being held by fighters from the Libyan town of Zintan, who flew him there after his arrest in the south. He appeared to be in good health despite a hand injury, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which visited him Tuesday.
Officials with the NTC have reported that al-Senoussi, the former intelligence chief, has also been captured. But some later cast doubt on that assertion, and his whereabouts are not known.
A year has passed since entrepreneur Kim Harris concluded that the security of a paid professional position with health benefits outweighed the autonomy of operating a mobile dog grooming business.
Counting on the graduate degrees she earned in social work and criminal justice, the East St. Louis resident waded into the job market confident of a return to the full-time workforce.
Harris, 45, now realizes she underestimated the depth of the employment crisis.
“Even my undergraduate degree in education hasn’t helped,” said Harris, who supplements her business income with a part-time job as an aide at a Metro East health care facility. “They’re laying off teachers everywhere, too.”
Officials who track St. Louis economic trends are unfortunately unable to offer much in the way of hope to job-seekers such as Harris, one of 132,345 area residents who are jobless and don’t want to be.
Job creation, they say, has stalled on both sides of the Mississippi River, and the prognosis for early 2012 isn’t much better.
Hiring “is stuck on hold nationally and will probably continue to drift down a little,” said Howard Wall, director of the Institute for the Study of Economics and the Environment at Lindenwood University. “We’re just along for the ride, and there’s not much we can do about it instant credit report.”
Vicki Niederhofer, an economic analyst with the Illinois Department of Employment Security office in Belleville, has seen the jobless rate in her state again creep into double digits after a solid year of improvement.
The Metro East lost 2,700 jobs in the year since September 2010 as the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.1 percent during the 12-month stretch. (Chicago, by contrast, added 17,000 jobs in the same period.)
“The national headwinds are difficult to fight,” Niederhofer said.
A Post-Dispatch survey of the region’s 40 largest employers seems to bear out Niederhofer’s belief that hiring won’t rebound until recession-weary consumers loosen the purse strings.
Less than a third of companies, government agencies and nonprofit organizations said they were planning to expand their workforce by the end of the year.
In employment economics, the past often serves as prologue.
Given that, Niederhofer cites a 2010 baseline survey conducted by her agency to forecast the Metro East jobs with the “highest projected demand” through 2018.
Health care tops the list, followed by office and administrative support, management, food preparation, transportation and production.
Experts say there are 72 million reasons
Germany’s chancellor says she would support a Europe-wide move to recapitalize banks across the continent if such a moves was deemed necessary.
Angela Merkel said “if there is a common view that banks aren’t sufficiently capitalized for the current market condition” a financial firewall should be built.
The comments come after the International Monetary Fund called on Europe to put up billions of euros to recapitalize Europe’s biggest banks.
Merkel said “common guidelines” on the right amount of capitalization were necessary, adding that this needed to be done urgently. She was speaking in Brussels Wednesday after a meeting with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
BRUSSELS (AP) _ The International Monetary Fund, a key player in eurozone bailouts, on Wednesday pushed for radical changes in the way the region’s debt crisis should be handled.
Antonio Borges, the head of the IMF’s Europe program, said the eurozone’s bailout fund should get more firepower and new tools.
To help, he said the IMF could intervene in bond markets to keep the crisis from engulfing large economies like Italy and Spain. The surprise proposal would profoundly alter the fund’s role in the crisis.
It has so far contributed close to euro80 billion ($105 billion) to eurozone bailouts, about a third of the total, but never intervened in open markets.
“We have a whole set of options that could be put on the table to restore confidence in those countries,” Borges said at a news conference in Brussels.
His comments are the first open acknowledgment of a radical change in approach by the IMF to the eurozone’s debt crisis. The currency union’s debt troubles have intensified severely as most investors expect a default by Greece and fear much larger Italy and Spain will be dragged into the crisis.
In public statements until now, IMF officials had insisted on agreements made at a eurozone summit in July, which gave a first range of new powers to the region’s bailout fund and tentatively offered a second, euro109 billion bailout for Greece, with modest losses accepted by banks on their Greek investments.
But Borges made clear on Wednesday that those decisions were no longer sufficient.
He said that the euro109 billion figure was an estimate based on conditions that have since changed, adding that a new program needed bigger focus on Greece’s massive debt and growth. He said that didn’t necessarily entail bigger losses for banks and other private Greek bond holders.
Borges also piled pressure on Greece to take more stringent measures to get its economy back on track, saying there was no rush to take a decision on the payment on the next slice of bailout money because the country doesn’t face a big bond repayment deadline until December.
Athens has said it will start running out of money to pay salaries and pensions in mid-November if it doesn’t get the euro8 billion ($11 billion) installment of its first euro110 billion ($145 billion) bailout.
The increasing uncertainty over Greece’s fate have increased market volatility and destabilizing the banking sector. Belgium and France are fighting for the survival of Dexia, the first potential failure of a big European bank since the credit crunch of 2008.
To build confidence, Borges backed a push to boost the impact of the eurozone’s bailout fund by using its resources more creatively.
In a new report on Europe released at the same time as the press conference, the IMF said the eurozone should consider using its crisis tools to guarantee bond issues from struggling countries. It also said eurozone countries should commit to indemnify the European Central Bank against possible losses on purchases of shaky government bonds it has made so far.
Both these moves have been discussed as part of a plan to bolster the effectiveness of the euro440 billion ($580 billion) bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility.
Borges said the IMF is ready to help Europe support struggling Italy and Spain as soon as all countries have ratified the changes to the EFSF agreed in July.
For instance, the IMF could help the eurozone’s bailout fund to support the distressed bond markets in Italy and Spain by buying their bonds on the open market alongside the EFSF. The fund could also give the two countries precautionary credit lines, he added.
He said Europe needs to take coordinated action on its banks to restore confidence in the financial sector. The IMF has previously said that it may cost as much as euro200 billion to recapitalize lenders across the continent.
“We are not saying that banks are in trouble and we are not saying that banks are weak,” Borges said, but he stressed that there was a big crisis of confidence that could only be addressed through action at European level.
In its report, the IMF says the EFSF should be empowered to directly recapitalize banks.
U.S. stock futures are sinking after European finance ministers pushed back a decision about Greece’s next bailout.
European financial officials are meeting in Poland, joined by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The group’s leader said Friday that it will not decide until next month whether Greece has qualified for its next round of bailout money.
Worries about a possible default by Greece have weighed on financial markets all summer. That kind of financial shock might tip the global economy back into recession.
At 7:45 a.m. Eastern, S&P 500 futures are down 6 points, or 0.5 percent, at 1,198. Dow futures are down 50, or 0.4 percent, at 11,325. Nasdaq 100 futures are off 8, or 0.3 percent, at 2,277.
Stocks have risen every day this week, their first four-day winning streak since August.
Powered by WordPress -- XHTML 1.0