| State Of Colorado Expands Contract With Alere Medical To Include Medicaid Recipients With COPD
Alere Medical, Inc., a leading health management company, announced today that it has been chosen by the State of Colorado to manage its Medicaid recipients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) beginning in October 2007. This is the second expansion of the State of Colorado's contract with Alere Medical, which is also successfully managing the state's Medicaid heart failure and asthma patients.
"We believe that the success we've achieved with Alere's asthma program, combined with the preliminary positive experience in Alere's heart failure program, will result in similar results for our members with COPD," said Christy Hunter, Disease Management Coordinator for the state.
"Alere has been very pleased with the success of its Medicaid heart failure and asthma programs in Colorado," added Timothy J.
The new MDs in town: Hospitalists
Patients at South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside are learning a thing or two about changes in the administration of care.
South Nassau is using a type of physician not well known to the public -- the hospitalist.
Patients at South Nassau receive care from teams that include these doctors, mostly internal medicine physicians who specialize in acute care and are based at the hospital rather than in private offices. Some hospitals call them inpatient care specialists. "From the moment patients are admitted to the second they're discharged, the hospitalists work in concert with the physicians and the nursing staff and provide complementary care that assists patients in their recovery from illness or injury," said Dr. Joshua Kugler, senior vice president at South Nassau.
CT scans to determine heart disease in the emergency room
In the future, patients who arrive at a hospital Emergency Department complaining of chest pain may be diagnosed with a sophisticated CT scan. If the diagnosis is negative, the patient can go home�and the total time at the hospital will be much shorter than it is today. .
Employees in Rockford, Illinois Lose Nearly a Ton of Weight and Save Employers a Ton of Money in Healthcare Costs
Tangerine Wellness Proves Financial Incentives, Not Disincentives, Work Best to Reduce Waistlines and Bottom Line Costs. Rockford, IL and Boston, MA (PRWEB) October 31, 2007 -- Employers in Rockford, Illinois know a thing or two about saving money on healthcare costs: pay employees to lose weight, pay them to keep the weight off and reap the savings in annual healthcare costs. Using Tangerine Wellness, the first incentive-based corporate wellness program that reduces the cost of healthcare for employers, employees at Rockford area businesses have already lost more than 1,700 pounds and their employers have seen between a 10 - 19 percent decrease in medical claims costs. .
Asthma Foundation Offers National Flu Shot Finder
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced the week after Thanksgiving, November 27 to December 2, as National Influenza Vaccination Week. Despite annual CDC recommendations, influenza vaccination (flu shot) rates in young children remain disturbingly low. Only 20 percent of children age 6 to 23 months were fully immunized for the flu during the 2005-2006 season. So the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) is making it easier for asthma patients to find flu shot clinics with a free "Flu Shot Finder" at http://www.aafa.org.
The flu is a serious and potentially deadly viral infection that causes respiratory problems, spreads easily, and is a major concern for 20 million Americans with asthma. Each year, it causes approximately 20,000 hospitalizations and nearly 100 deaths in American children under age 5.
St. Amant firefighters receive FEMA grant
ST. AMANT — The Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded a $110,960 grant to the St. Amant Volunteer Fire Department, Fire Chief James LeBlanc said Tuesday. "It’s the third year in a row we have received a FEMA grant," LeBlanc said. "That’s about $300,000 the parish didn’t have to pay," he said of the three grants. Other fire departments on the east bank of the parish also have received grants, bringing the total received in the past three years to more than $500,000, LeBlanc said. The grant announced Tuesday will be used to buy firefighting protective gear, a thermal imagining camera that locates fires inside walls, complete training lesson plans with laptop computers, a PowerPoint system and training manuals, LeBlanc said.
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MOUNT VERNON — The pre-Thanksgiving rash of warm weather gave rise to the swarming of Asian lady beetles in some parts of Central Ohio this week, although their numbers are generally much lower this year than they have been in previous years. "I’ve seen them in years past cover the whole side of a building," said Rick Amore of Helmick’s Exterminating in Mount Vernon. He said that in large numbers, the beetles can be very stressful. One particular case he had involved trying to get rid of a nest of yellow jackets, which were surrounded by thousands of Asian beetles. He couldn’t tell at times whether he was being bitten or being stung. Over the last 20 years, multi-colored Asian beetles (Harmonia axyridis) have become the dominant species of ladybug in North America.
Think For The Memories
I may need to change my long-term goal, which is to make it to retirement, at which time I'd planned to sleep late and loll around until 11, drinking coffee and reading the paper. If I want to avoid Alzheimer's disease, however, I may want to aim higher. Maybe I should work the crossword puzzle, too, and take up a cause — napper's rights? It seems that people with a sense of purpose stand a better chance of warding off the terminal brain disease. That's the conclusion of a study released this month by Chicago's Rush University Medical Center. People who wake up each morning with a sense of duty and dive into their day may increase the neural connections that protect them from the disease. Autopsies of some of the go-getters in the study revealed the same brain lesions that marked Alzheimer's sufferers, yet these people didn't show signs of dementia in life.
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