Daily Rounds: Hospital Merger With MGH; Dental Emergencies Rising; Noshing On The Subway

Northampton Hospital, MGH to pursue merger - The Boston Globe - "Trustees of Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton have voted to negotiate a deal to join Massachusetts General Hospital, an alliance that would extend the presence of Mass. General and its powerful parent, Partners HealthCare, outside eastern Massachusetts. The merger could send more Cooley Dickinson patients to Boston to receive treatment for cancer, heart failure, and other complicated conditions, boosting business at Mass. General. It might also hurt Baystate Health, the major Springfield health care system." (The Boston Globe)

Dental visits to ERs are on the rise - NPR - "Americans who turn up in the emergency room to get dental care aren't lost, they're probably just running out of options.According to a new report from the Pew Center on the States, more than 800,000 visits to the ER in 2009 were for toothaches and other avoidable dental ailments. "People showing up at emergency rooms for dental is really your sign that your system is breaking down," Shelly Gehshan, director for the Pew Center's Children's Dental Campaign says. "It's just not serving enough people. This is your symptom of a system in crisis." (NPR)

Eating in public: Pleasure or peril? - The New York Times - "...the claim that noshing leads to litter and filth harks back to racial and class stereotypes from the Victorian era. In those days, social reformers tried to crack down on working-class public eaters and food vendors — many of whom were immigrants — by linking them to squalor, disease and shame. To 19th-century guardians of public morality, the newfangled habit of eating outside the home was a menace to body and soul...For children, the magazine hinted darkly, eating in public was worse than unhealthy — it was bad for their morals. All this sermonizing about public morals was a euphemism for a more concrete threat: the growing populations of Irish, German, Italian and Jewish immigrants." (The New York Times)