When patients leave the hospital, it doesn't mean they're cured. If they don't take their medicine, improve their diet or get check-ups, they can end up back in the hospital. More than any other hospital in the region, Barnes-Jewish Hospital in the Central West End struggles with high numbers of returning patients. The hospital needs to reduce the number of patients who were already in the hospital within the past month or face a loss of Medicare payments. A certain percentage of those readmissions are unavoidable. Other times, patients just need help filling their prescriptions or following through with discharge instructions. Or they come back to the emergency room because they have nowhere else to go. That's where the hospital's newly opened Stay Healthy Clinic comes in. Dr. Henish Bhansali runs the clinic, where he sees patients within a week of their release from Barnes. Patients who are identified during their hospital stay as vulnerable— they have a diagnosis of heart failure and their social situation puts them at risk to return—are given an appointment in the clinic within a week of their initial discharge. The hospital can arrange transportation and provide cab vouchers for the return visit.
Dr. Anjum Usman, of Naperville, has been a star in the world of alternative treatments for autism for years, but now she's facing professional discipline for her approach to the frustrating disorder. In prescribing chelation, a hormone modulator and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, Usman subjected a young Chicago boy to unproven treatments and demonstrated "extreme departure from rational medical judgment," a complaint filed this week by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation states. Listing those treatments, along with dozens of dietary supplements and other therapies, the state said that "none has ? been proven to influence the course of autism." Many of these treatments are extolled in online forums and at conferences like Autism One, held in the Chicago area each spring. Lured by testimonials professing miraculous recoveries, desperate parents of children with autism spend thousands of dollars on them despite a lack of evidence and in spite of known risks. The complaint, which alleges that Usman "engaged in a pattern of practice or other behavior that demonstrate incapacity or incompetence to practice," asks that Usman's medical license be revoked, suspended, placed on probation or otherwise disciplined.
The Nebraska Health Information Initiative has signed 14 critical access hospitals to its statewide health information exchange in recent weeks, with others expected to join as more hospitals roll out digital health record systems. Nebraska, which has a population of about 1.8 million, is one of the most rural states in the U.S., and with 65 critical access hospitals, or CAHs, has more of these facilities than most other states. And while more than a dozen CAHs just joined the Nebraska Health Information Initiative, many of the remaining CAHs in Nebraska "are still implementing e-health records," said Deb Bass, a former nurse and NeHII executive director. "Until these other hospitals get that work done, having all of them part of NeHII is still a pipedream," she said. There are many constraints on CAHs rolling out EHRs, including "a lack of technology skills," she said. "Many have only a part-time IT person," she said. Some of those hospitals in Nebraska are so small that they treat fewer than five patients a day, she said. Still, having the state's CAHs part of NeHII is vital, she said in an interview with InformationWeek Healthcare. Among other government requirements, CAHs must be located in rural areas and separated from other hospitals by at least 35 miles, or less in mountainous regions.
In 1977, while working in the hospital as a third-year medical student, Dr. Douglas Dieterich was accidentally stuck with a needle contaminated with hepatitis. And for the next 20 years, he struggled with regular and debilitating episodes of exhaustion, jaundice and high fevers. But he did not quit medicine. Instead Dr. Dieterich continued to train and then to practice, eventually becoming a national expert in hepatitis C, the very disease he had acquired. Clinical trials of drugs to combat the disease, some led by Dr. Dieterich, have resulted in a better understanding of the virus that causes hepatitis C and, more recently, to cures. About 10 years ago, Dr. Dieterich himself was finally cured with one of the drug combinations that he had helped to study. Now a professor of medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, Dr. Dieterich said recently: "In the dark days of the 1980s, I remember being really sick and thinking, 'Damn it. I hope I can help someone else before this virus gets me.' Now it looks like I can. I think it's the beginning of the end of hepatitis C; and that is one of the happiest statements I can make."
Former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen has joined the board of Vanguard Health Systems, an operator of 28 hospitals and complimentary facilities and services. "The addition of Phil to the board will further diversify the outstanding talents and wide-ranging experience that our directors already bring to Vanguard," said Charlie Martin, chairman and chief executive of Nashville-based Vanguard. Bredesen brings experience as a healthcare entrepreneur and from overseeing changes to the state's Medicaid program, TennCare, during his tenure as governor. He also is the author of the book Fresh Medicine: How to Fix Reform and Build a Sustainable Health Care System and speaks to national audiences on healthcare, political leadership, and other topics.
While helping his boyhood pal Jeff George run lucrative prescription drug mills, Theodore Obermeyer's orders to doctors were simple: "Keep the patients happy." The favored amounts —180 to 240 oxycodone pills per month—would keep customers from deserting them for competing pill mills that offered more-generous supplies of the powerful painkillers, federal prosecutors said Obermeyer told physicians. If the doctors, often recruited on Craigslist, were stingy, Obermeyer would badger them to prescribe more, prosecutors said. Faced with stacks of evidence of the key role he played in the illicit operation, the 30-year-old West Palm Beach man pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of racketeering conspiracy. George, who tapped him to manage clinics in West Palm Beach and Hallandale Beach, pleaded guilty to the same charge last week. In return, prosecutors dropped three other felonies against them. Like George, Obermeyer also faces charges in state court in connection with the multimillion-dollar operation that prosecutors said is linked to more than 50 deaths.