This week's Grand Rounds are up at Diabetes Mine, maybe the best patient blog on the web.

Next week, Grand Rounds will be right here at hospital impact! Please email submissions to me at tony[at]hospitalimpact[dot]org by Monday night 11:59 EST, October 24.

Archives of previous Grand Rounds can be found here on Blogborygmi. For a list of submission guidelines, click here.

For those that are new, Grand Rounds is the weekly wrap-up of the best entries in the medical/healthcare blogosphere. Check out a few in the archive and you'll see a little bit of everything: patient stories (funny and scary), healthcare policy musings, health trends, patient/physician relationship mishaps and heroics, and the works.

If you haven't already, check out MedScape's blog - numerous nurses tell their front line stories in the aftermath of Katrina. Some memorable quotes:

"The looks on some of the faces of these people will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. I already see these people in my dreams. The cries of the residents (and even some of the staff) when they are told they have nothing left to go back to and that we do not know if their families have made it, are sometimes too much to handle."

"Not one person I spoke to had on their own clothes; they were grateful for the donations. It was overwhelming and for the most part seemed unbearable, but every time I looked up to take a deep breath, the outpouring of love and humanity I witnessed gave me strength to move on to the next cot, holding the next person."

"My [8-year-old] daughter provided much-needed assistance by running paperwork back and forth to order medications or to bring me supplies. I watched her facial expressions as she gently placed stickers on the patients signaling that they had been seen by the nurse, always making eye contact and always with a smile. I knew that her life was changed forever, for the better."

Also, check out the story of this 113-bed mobile hospital.

AHA launched a new site Hospital Relief Efforts - other hospitals around the nation can use this site to offer up personnal and supplies. (Hat tip: MSSP Nexus)

I was quite excited this week when I was contacted by Andrew Barna, a hospital executive over in San Jose, CA. He just started a hospital-admin focused blog, called healthcare tomorrow. He's off to a great start with an entries on HSAs, what's right on healthcare, and (my personal favorite) the long-term potential impact of JCAHO.

Andrew - welcome to the hospital admin blogosphere! Look forward to more insights now that the JCAHOites have left the building.

What fun it was to get a comment from Carol Kovac, IBM Healthcare's GM. She's started a new blog called LifeLines. Among her first posts are predictions that EHR: (1) will NOT evolve into smart cards; and (2) will ultimately be paid for by employers and payors.

As I mentioned in a previous post, IBM Healthcare has grown from 2 employees to 1,500 under Carol's leadership. I guess Carol has a knack for growing things as she is an avid gardener as well.