Medical blog » Family

Health Care Connect aims to assist in finding family docs

admin — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:01:20 +0000

It just got a little easier to find health-care services closer to home.
On Thursday, the Ontario government launched two new initiatives to improve access to health care, and hopefully relieve stress on the province’s emergency rooms.
Health Care Connect aims to help people find a family health-care provider.
Dr. Mark Mensour, emergency department lead with the North Simcoe Muskoka Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), said the program aims to keep patients with less urgent needs out of emergency, by referring them to a family health-care provider in their community.
“This program looks at improving the care to the 891,000 Ontario residents who don’t have access to a family physician,” he said. “The program will refer them to other options. Those most in need will be assisted first.”
Patients call a special Telehealth Ontario number to sign up for the patient database, where they will be prioritized based on their health needs. Local nurses, called Care Connectors, will review a patient’s information and find them a place in a provider’s practice.
Care Connect is only for people without a family doctor. The program does not guarantee it will find someone a doctor, so patients are encouraged to keep looking on their own.
The government also made local health services online at a new one-stop website.
By typing in your postal code, residents can get information on the nearest after-hours and walk-in clinics, urgent care centres, family health teams and emergency rooms.
.
To register for Health Care Connect, call 1-800-445-1822.

Picking a Safe Family Daycare for your Child

admin — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:58:15 +0000

Investigators say 54 year old Marcus Blanchard of West Palm Beach had a dirty little secret. They say he was molesting a half dozen kids his girlfriend was supposed to be babysitting in her home.
She never got a county day care license, even though records show she was warned in the past she needed one.
“Any child care in this county requires a licensure. Even if you have just one child? Even one child,” said Courtney Shippey with the Palm Beach County Health Department, which issues daycare licenses.
Carolyn Damptey of West Palm Beach is playing by the rules. She runs a licensed family daycare out of her home.
She feels licensing is key.
“You shouldn’t want to just place your child with anyone anywhere. You’ve got to feel comfortable that your child is in good hands,” Damptey told us.
To get a daycare license, people like Carolyn have to pass home inspections by the thecounty health department and fire-rescue, be trained in first aid and CPR, and get 30 hours of child care training at a community college.
“The applicant as well as all household members have to be background screened,” Shippey said.
So if you’re a parent, trying to find a family daycare, how do you find one you can trust? Experts say even if you know them, make sure they’ve got a daycare license. A license costs $40 and is good for one year.
“The license is the only sure indication that the home is appropriate and safe for your child. If they don’t have that, don’t even fool with them? Don’t go any further,” Shippey explained. He says the license must be displayed in a conspicuous place in their home. You can also go to the health department’s website,
to see a list of the licensed family daycare homes.

Family History of Melanoma Doubles Parkinson's Risk

admin — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 05:23:26 +0000

MONDAY, Feb. 16 (HealthDay News) — People with a family history of melanoma are twice as likely to develop Parkinson’s disease, a new study finds.
While the reasons for this association are not clear, other studies have shown that people with Parkinson’s diseases are at greater risk for developing melanoma.
“For people with a family member with melanoma, they may be at risk for Parkinson’s disease,” said lead researcher Dr. Xiang Gao, an instructor in medicine at Harvard University School of Public Health. “This study suggests that some genetic components for melanoma are associated with Parkinson’s disease.”
Earlier studies had found that Parkinson’s patients taking levodopa, a common treatment for the condition, were more susceptible to melanoma, Gao said. “They thought that levodopa increased the risk of melanoma,” he explained.
But later reports found that people with melanoma were at high risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, Gao said. “This suggests that it may not be the drugs, it could be something else, which is why I did this study,” he said.
The finding was released Monday and was also expected be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting, April 25 to May 2, in Seattle.
For the study, Gao’s team collected data on almost 157,000 men and women who did not have Parkinson’s disease. These individuals participated in the Health Professional Follow-up Study and the Nurses Health Study.
During 14 years of follow-up, 616 people developed Parkinson’s disease. Among those people who also reported a family history of melanoma, the risk for developing Parkinson’s disease was doubled, the researchers found.
After adjusting for other factors such as colorectal, lung, prostate or breast cancer as well as age, smoking or caffeine consumption, only the association between melanoma and Parkinson’s disease was significant, the researchers reported.
Dr. Roberto Zanetti, director of the Piedmont Cancer Registry in Torino, Italy, and an expert in the connection between Parkinson’s and melanoma, doesn’t think this study adds much to what has already been reported.
“It seems to add a piece of evidence to the question of the association between Parkinson’s disease and melanoma,” Zanetti said. “The abstract does not add much about the mechanisms. And, in terms of interpretation, it does not seems to add much to what we have discussed in
two years ago,” he said.
For more about Parkinson’s disease, visit the
.

Family planning advocates use report to fight critics

admin — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:25:59 +0000

NEW YORK — Publicly funded family planning prevents nearly 2 million unintended pregnancies and more than 800,000 abortions in the United States each year, saving billions of dollars, according to new research intended to counter conservative objections to expanding the program.
The data is in a report being released on Tuesday by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health think tank whose research is generally respected even by experts and activists who don’t share its advocacy of abortion rights.
Report co-author Rachel Benson Gold called the family planning program “smart government at its best,” asserting that every dollar spent on it saves taxpayers $4 in costs associated with unintended births to mothers eligible for Medicaid-funded natal care.
Despite such arguments, federal funding for family planning is a divisive issue.
Last month, under withering Republican criticism, House Democrats abandoned an expansion of family planning services for the poor in the economic stimulus bill.
One anti-abortion activist, Troy Newman of Operation Rescue, called the short-lived proposal a “shameful population control program that targeted low-income families.”
However, Democrats in Congress are not abandoning their overall goal. They plan to push soon for a major funding increase for Title X, the main federal family planning program, as part of broader legislation endorsed by President Barack Obama to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies.
The Guttmacher report provides ammunition for advocates of the funding increase.
Surveying data from the 2006 fiscal year, the report says the national family planning program prevented 1.94 million unintended pregnancies, including almost 400,000 teen pregnancies. Based on statistical analysis and projections, these pregnancies would have resulted in 860,000 unintended births, 810,000 abortions and 270,000 miscarriages, according to the report.
Without publicly funded family planning, it said, the U.S. abortion rate would be nearly two-thirds higher, and nearly twice as high among poor women.
The report also endorses pending congressional legislation that would increase funding for Title X family planning.
Some advocacy groups hope to more than double the current funding to $700 million a year.
Some conservatives, however, dislike Title X because one of its big recipients is the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a major provider of abortions as well as family planning services.
Title X funds cannot be used for abortions, but critics contend the federal money frees up other Planned Parenthood funds for its abortion services.

Reach Out and Read program introduced at Family Health Medical …

admin — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:33:43 +0000

MAYVILLE – Getting books from the doctor will soon be a routine part of well-child visits at Family Health Medical Services, as doctors and nurses welcome the Reach Out and Read program to the practice. Family Health Medical Services joins more than 3,797 programs nationally that are working to make books part of a healthy childhood.
Reach Out and Read is a simple, yet highly effective concept. The program targets children growing up in poverty and without books and features three key elements:
Volunteers read with children in pediatric clinic waiting areas.
Pediatricians educate parents about the importance of reading with their children every day.
Every child from the age of six months to five years receives a new book to take home and keep when they come in for a well-child checkup.
“Giving a book to a young child, along with age-appropriate advice about sharing books for the parents, may be the only concrete activity a pediatrician can routinely do to promote child development,” commented Barry S. Zuckerman, MD ROR co-founder, and chief of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine.
Medical research supports the claim, showing that literacy-promoting interventions by the pediatrician have a significant effect on parental behaviors, beliefs and attitudes toward reading aloud. For more than a decade, studies have indicated that parents who get books and literacy counseling from their doctors and nurses are more likely to read to their young children, read to them more often, and provide more books in the home. In addition, several studies have also shown improvements in the language scores of young children receiving Reach Out and Read.
“Reading with your child is an invitation to conversation,” said Dr. Robert Berke, MD ROR Medical Director at Family Health Services.
For more information about Reach Out and Read at Family Health Medical Services, or if you would like to donate funds or volunteer as a reader, please call 753-7107.
Reach Out and Read is a national, non-profit program that is working to make literacy promotion a standard part of pediatric primary care, so that children grow up with books and a love of reading. ROR trains doctors and nurses about the importance of reading aloud and to give books to children at pediatric check-ups from six months to five years of age, with a special focus on children growing up in poverty. This year, Reach Out and Read will provide more than 4.1 million books to more than 2.5 million children, at over 3,797 programs throughout the country.

Surgeon General Offers Updated Family Health Tool

admin — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:08:12 +0000

If you have ever gone to the emergency room in the middle of the night, had to see a doctor while in another city or state, or changed doctors in your life, you have no doubt been privy to the ominous clipboard with a stack of paper up to your chin and a pen almost out of ink in which to fill out the forms. As dreaded as that experience is, I know that a lot of the questions in the past have been left blank on my forms because I am not up to speed on my family’s health history. Did any one of my relatives ever have heart disease or diabetes? Is there a history of blood clots or neurological disorders? If this sounds familiar and you wish you could know immediately what your health history is, the surgeon general and the Department of Health and Human Services are here to help.
In 2004, there was an online family history tool created by the surgeon general called “My Family Health Portrait.” Just last month, in early 2009, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) along with the Surgeon General’s Office revamped their original program and launched the new-and-improved tool again but now it is targeted to a wider audience.
The idea behind the program is simple. The government bands together with the National Cancer Institute in order to put together an online database for families to essentially create a family tree of health history that can also be uploaded to a personal computer (or possibly a PDA) for immediate access. The government denies being able to access your personal history or obtain a copy of it for general use, which ensures your privacy.
By keeping a lineage of health conditions accessible and current through the Internet, you could use the tool to send to family members in order to complete or confirm the results or you could send them right to your health care provider in order to ensure better-quality care by informing your doctor to the possibility of genetic conditions or discrepancies that may alter your present form of care.
Secretary of HHS Mike Leavitt—who’s Personalized Health Care Initiative the new version was adopted under—says, “This valuable tool can put family histories to work to improve patient well-being and the quality of care….The tool is built on health information technology standards that make it more convenient for consumers and more useful for practitioners. It is ready for use in electronic health records. And its software code will be openly available to other health organizations, so they can customize and build on its standards base.”
With the focus being on family history as an asset to solving current health mysteries, family records could now be used as an integral part of the healing process instead of the uninformed, trial-and-error approach some hospitals use because the information about the patient’s past history is not known or readily available.
My Family Health Portrait helps extended families to build on an existing family member’s “health information tree” by re-indexing the information. All information you include on the site is private and seen only by you and whomever you decide to send it to. However, if your aunt, brother, or third cousin wants to plot their history alongside yours, once you send it to another part of the family they can log in and “re-index” the tree to focus the center on their immediate family, making it easier for them to build the branches from their point of view instead of simply adding it to your pre-made family formula.
Cancer advocate for prevention and detection, Lance Armstrong hopes to provide the link on his website, “A strong family health history tool can be an important element for guiding medical decision-making, especially in the area of cancer screening, prevention and early detection,” Lance continues by saying, “This tool will further the capabilities of electronic health records and takes a significant step toward improving clinical care.”
The National Institute of Genomic Medicine of Mexico as well as the Indian Health Service both are planning to use the tool to boost their health care systems. Plant your own roots in as little as 20 minutes at
or, if you are an organization wishing to link the code to the system on your site, please go
.
Next time you find yourself or a family member in the middle of a health care crisis and need fast information of your past diagnoses, genetic predispositions, or patterns of occurrence for certain diseases and conditions, consult your personal family health portrait, it may just save your life…or at the very least the type of care you can receive.

Family: Victim makes 'good, but small, progress”

admin — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:55:54 +0000

STAMFORD — Family members and doctors for Charla Nash, the Stamford woman who was brutally mauled Monday by a 200-pound pet chimpanzee, thanked people Wednesday for supporting her and reported that she has made “some good, but small, progress.”
They spoke at a news conference at Stamford Hospital’s Tully Health Center on Strawberry Hill Court.
“While she remains in critical but stable condition, her vital signs are improving,” said Dr. Kevin Miller, Nash’s attending surgeon and physician of record.
Most of her face was ripped off in the attack, authorities have said.
Despite rumors that Nash, 55, was transferred to a hospital in Ohio, there were no plans to move her Wednesday night, hospital spokesman Scott Orstad said.
Last January, the first near-total face transplant in the United States was completed after a 22-hour surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
Orstad said the Nash family is considering options, but is not prepared to discuss her care yet.
Nash has “extensive facial and bilateral hand injuries” that required four teams of surgeons, including specialists in hand surgery, plastic surgery, orthopedic ophthalmology, trauma and anesthesia, Miller said.
Nash was in surgery for seven to eight hours, he said.
Her twin brother, Mike Nash, accompanied by their brother, Steve, read a statement on behalf of the family.
have selflessly offered their assistance to our family, and we are eternally grateful,” Mike Nash read without veering from his seven-paragraph statement or lifting his eyes to the crowd of reporters, photographers and camera operators.
The attack occurred Monday in the driveway of 241 Rockrimmon Road, home of Sandra Herold, who owns the 14-year-old chimp, named Travis. Nash was attacked just after getting out of her car, though police said it is not known why.
Nash, who lives in a Shippan apartment, worked for Herold, 70, at her towing company, Desire Me Motors in Stamford.
Herold called 911 at 3:44 p.m. Monday, shouting, “Please hurry up. He is killing my girlfriend.”
Trying to stave off the attack, Herold stabbed the chimp with a butcher knife and hit him with a shovel. Officers arrived minutes later and shot the chimp when he tried to climb into a police car.
Travis lived with the Herolds in Stamford since he was three weeks old, and often rode around town in trucks belonging to their towing company.
or 964-2242.

Family sues Itasca nursing home after woman dies

admin — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 13:05:38 +0000

ITASCA, Ill. – The family of an 89-year-old woman who was
found dead in a snow bank outside the courtyard of the suburban
Chicago nursing home where she lived has filed a lawsuit against
the facility.
(eye-TAS’-kuh).
Wentworth’s daughters say she wasn’t able to leave her bed
without help and suffered from dementia. They want to know how
their mother left without the staff noticing.
Louis Cairo, the family’s attorney, says Wentworth was wearing
just a hospital gown and had on an ankle bracelet that should’ve
triggered an alarm.

Peanut company family denies FDA findings

admin — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:08:25 +0000

LYNCHBURG, Va. – The family in charge of the company that shipped salmonella-contaminated peanut products blamed for sickening hundreds of people claims that reports of filthy condition at the company’s shuttered Georgia plant are “exaggerated” and insists that the company broke no laws.
The Food and Drug Administration alleges that Peanut Corp. of America knowingly distributed peanut products from its plant in Blakely, Ga., that had tested positive for salmonella at least 12 times over the past two years. The company had the products retested until new results came back negative, the agency said, a practice known as “lab shopping.”
at the plant, which it ordered shut down.
PCA makes just 1 percent of the peanut products sold in the United States, but those products are ingredients in hundreds of other foods, from ice cream to Asian-style sauces to dog biscuits.
In addition to sickening hundreds of people, the shipments of peanut butter, peanut paste and other goods from the plant have
, a congressional inquiry and the recall of hundreds of food products around the world.
In an interview Thursday, Beth Falwell, the sister of PCA President Stewart Parnell and daughter of PCA’s founder, vigorously defended the company, saying the FDA’s report was flawed and “exaggerated.”
Falwell denied that company engaged in “lab shopping” and insisted that company officials would never knowingly distribute contaminated products. Major customers, including Kellogg’s Co., routinely send their own inspectors to PCA’s plants, she said, and those companies would not have continued to do business with PCA if they had found major problems.
Acknowledging that the FDA may have found roaches at the Blakely plant, she added, “It’s a food manufacturing plant, you know? I’m saying it’s exaggerated.”
Falwell, her voice quivering with emotion, asked for patience while the investigations run the course. And she pleaded for the public to withhold judgment over Parnell’s leadership until all the facts come out.
Noting that food producers in most states are not required to alert health regulators if internal tests show possible contamination at their plants, Falwell said, “Right now, it’s not a law. Maybe it should be, but he didn’t break any laws.”

Family Health: Tearing the covers off of postpartum depression

admin — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:23:05 +0000

Medicine is a humbling profession. Just as you begin to feel good about the way you handled a patient’s concern or your perceived profound insight into a medical condition, something occurs that puts you in your place. So it was last Friday when my final patient of the day came to see me because of “a concern.” I had delivered her beautiful baby girl a number of months earlier. Apparently, over the past few weeks, she had been seeing a psychologist because she was depressed. In fact, she admitted to feeling this way since the delivery but had never discussed it with me. Clearly, I had missed the subtle signs of postpartum depression (PPD) – for example, her out-of-character anxiety, demonstrated by her repeated visits to the office for minor issues related to her child. More important, I had never asked her directly if all was well and obviously never made her feel secure about revealing her emotional state to me.
Ironically, in response to the publication of two related articles in the January edition of the
, I had intended to address PPD in this week’s column. Because of last week’s visit, I had even more reason to write about this topic.
PPD is considered the most common complication of childbearing. At least 13% of women suffer from this condition. PPD is of considerable concern because of the negative impact this illness has on the mother and on her family. Research has shown that PPD can lead to paternal depression, create significant marital tension, interfere with maternal-infant bonding and affect child development. At its extreme, PPD can lead to suicide and infanticide. A previous history of depression, marital strife, a lack of social, emotional and/or financial support are amongst the risk factors for developing PPD.
The symptoms of PPD include sleep difficulties, decreased energy, changes in appetite, feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness, a sense of being overwhelmed, profound anxiety (especially over the well-being of the baby), panic attacks, intense anger and irritability. The difficulty is distinguishing PPD from post-partum blues.
Patients identified as having PPD benefit from psychosocial therapy. Some may require antidepressant medication. But the real key is early identification of women who are at risk for this condition so that its impact can be minimized.
The two studies – one originating in Canada and the other in the United Kingdom – evaluated the effectiveness of a structured intervention program targeted at pregnant women considered to be at risk for developing PPD. A simple questionnaire designed to detect PPD – the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale – was used. At-risk women who were in the intervention group were half as likely to develop PPD when compared to the control (non-intervention) group.
So what is the message? At the macro level, it would seem worthwhile to develop a broad-based and coordinated program designed to assess all women in the postnatal period. In this way, intervention can be provided in a timely and effective manner. At the micro level, it is imperative that family members and professionals be vigilant so that they can identify the indicators of PPD. And, of course, all pregnant women should be made aware of the signs and symptoms of PPD and encouraged to discuss any concerns.
-Dr. Yoel Abells appears Wednesdays on the Body & Health page. You can submit your health questions by sending an email to the address below.
familyhealth@nationalpost.com