Dr. T, who is an anesthesiologist, says she has a lot of respect for most surgeons, even if they are sometimes more impatient than an anesthesiologist would prefer. But then there's the cutter she refers to as Dr. Myrtha Banshee. It's probably just as well she uses a pseudonym, because Doc Banshee would lose all her patients after they read what she did to one little girl who needed surgery.

Harvard Pilgrim CEO Charlie Baker runs the numbers.

Brigham and Women's Hospital reports a surgical team yesterday performed the nation's second face transplant, on a man who suffered serious injuries in a fall:

The team of seven plastic surgeons and one ear, nose and throat surgeon, nurses, anesthesiologists and residents worked for 17 hours in replacing the mid-face area of the patient including the nose, hard palate, upper lip, facial skin, muscles of facial animation and the nerves that power them and provide sensation.

They used tissue from the body of a man whose family had agreed to donate his organs after his death.

The state Department of Public Health says Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center failed to adequately deal with outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant staph in its maternity unit.

Medical Center CEO Paul Levy has posted a memo on the state citation and what the hospital is doing about it. He adds all the cases have been treated successfully and none involved babies or parents in the neo-natal intensive care unit.

MassDevice is the "online journal of the medical devices industry in Massachusetts and New England."

Via Tinker Ready.

The shelter resident had a serious medical problem - he was suicidal. But a shelter nurse told him to tell 911 he was having a heart attack because that would make the ambulance get there faster. The responding paramedics had a problem with that.

100 fall ill; college seeks to sterilize entire buildings.

After all, attendees at the college's annual BioIndustry Forum next week would probably not appreciate the irony of coming down with the awful, if rarely fatal, infection.

South African MBA student gets word out about lockdown.

Being a paramedic isn't all grim.

Tinker Ready wonders if Caritas Christi hired Shephard Fairey to design its new ad campaign, which, as you can see above, features a Soviet-style raised fist holding a stethoscope - and which promises health care for the people, by the people and to the people, as opposed to the hegemonic plutocratic coverage at those oppressive teaching hospitals.

Paul Levy at Beth Israel Deaconess posts the e-mail he sent to hospital staff last night on the hospital's budget: The hospital will likely lay off 150 people, but that's compared to the 600 originally planned - and the 900 lowest-paid workers will not be laid off.

Other money saving steps: Executives will lose the 3% raises they got on Jan. 1, employees will temporarily stop accruing "earned" vacation time, the hospital will not fill most positions as they become vacant through attrition, an annual staff barbecue is cancelled and the hospital will no longer subsidize most employees with BlackBerries or pay for meals at staff meetings. Also, top hospital management, including Levy, are taking pay cuts.

Levy also explains why the hospital won't be canceling its contract with the Red Sox - partly because it has a contract and partly because the deal is an excellent marketing tool.

One interesting reason the hospital will bring in less money than originally budgeted: A new state law forbidding hospitals to send away emergency patients means Beth Israel is now seeing fewer ER patients, because BI was where many of these "diverted" patients ended up.