�鶹Ů��

Derry Medical Center, Southern New Hampshire Internal Medicine (SNHIM) and UnitedHealthcare have launched an accountable care program to help improve people's health and their satisfaction with their health care experience. Derry Medical Center and SNHIM will provide care under a value-based, patient-centric care model focused on keeping people healthy. The new accountable care program will dedicate resources to care coordination and make it easier to share important health information. Derry Medical Center and SNHIM serve more than 10,000 people eligible for Medicare. (10/29)

Eight children in Western Washington have been hospitalized this fall with acute neurologic illnesses, and health investigators are trying to determine if the children are suffering from an extremely rare syndrome that causes varying degrees of paralysis similar to polio. The children had a range of types and severity of symptoms, but all had a loss of strength or movement in one or more arms or legs. Doctors emphasized the syndrome is not contagious. (Long, 10/28)

The announcement earlier this year that Alta Bates Summit Medical Center would close its campus [in Berkeley, Calif.], possibly as early as 2018 but certainly by 2030, sent shock waves through the East Bay. Cities issued resolutions calling for the hospital to stay open, and “Save Our Hospital” signs popped up on lawns and in store windows. Coming just a year after Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo closed following a long struggle to stay solvent, Alta Bates’ plans to shutter has stoked fears that a large swath of the East Bay is turning into a health care desert that will result in delays in care for those facing life-threatening conditions and longer waits for inpatient procedures. (Ioffee, 10/30)

Last year alone, nearly 2,700 children tested in Philadelphia had harmful levels of lead in their blood. Lead poisoning can cause irreversible damage, including lower IQ and cause lifelong learning and behavioral problems. Lead poisoning can be prevented, and cases have dropped sharply here and across the country. Yet Philadelphia continues to struggle to eradicate the problem, especially in the city's poorest neighborhoods. In some stubborn pockets of the city, as many as one out of five children under age 6 have high lead levels. (Laker, Ruderman and Purcell, 10/30)

Chesterfield County-based Venebio Group LLC thinks it can help with that epidemic by getting to the root of the problem: predicting who is most likely to die by an opioid prescription. The scientific consulting firm has developed a tool — the Venebio Opioid Advisor — that allows physicians to better understand the likelihood that their patient may overdose on an opioid prescription before they write it. That means that if patients are in need of a powerful, painkilling opioid, the physician could ensure they also have access to the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, for example. (Demeria, 10/30)

The first year of safe-sleep training sessions concluded on Saturday morning, part of a multiyear effort to spread the word that babies should sleep alone, on their backs and in a crib free of suffocation risks. The sessions, designed to train “safe-sleep ambassadors,” are open to anyone in the community and are held at Columbus Public Health on Parsons Avenue. In that way, health officials hope to cut down on one of the biggest causes of infant mortality in the county. On average, a baby dies every other week in Franklin County because of unsafe sleep practices, Gray-Medina said. (Feran, 10/30)

The former director of Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Norris Cotton Cancer Center says he was forced out after he questioned how $6 million raised for cancer research was spent. Dr. Mark Israel of Hanover, who headed the center for 14 years, filed the lawsuit Thursday in Grafton County Superior Court. He is suing Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic, Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health. He is asking the court to order Dartmouth-Hitchcock to return the $6 million to the center's philanthropic accounts, and to award him back wages, compensatory damages and/or restitution in excess of $2 million, as well as attorneys' fees and costs. (Grossmith, 10/29)

As communities across Kansas struggle to accommodate an influx of people with mental illness in their criminal justice systems, religious leaders are calling for a new approach in Lawrence. A group called Justice Matters, which represents 23 congregations, released a report this week titled “Restorative Justice at Home.” The report contains several recommendations to beef up Douglas County’s mental health treatment options as an alternative to a proposed expansion of the county jail. At a news conference Thursday, members of the group described the report as comprehensive reform that aims to shift the community from thinking about mental illness as a risk factor for criminal behavior to instead thinking about it as a medical condition like heart disease or cancer. (Marso, 10/28)

About 8,000 patients were prescribed opiates by Seattle Pain Centers this year, part of an estimated 25,000 seen at eight clinic sites since 2008. The sites closed days after state regulators suspended the medical license of former director Dr. Frank Li, saying he failed to properly monitor Medicaid patients, possibly contributing to at least 18 deaths since 2010. Li, who has denied the allegations, has not been charged with a crime. ... At a news conference Thursday, members of the group described the report as comprehensive reform that aims to shift the community from thinking about mental illness as a risk factor for criminal behavior to instead thinking about it as a medical condition like heart disease or cancer. (Aleccia, 10/30)

The Ohio Supreme Court this week put an end to a long legal battle between the Cleveland Clinic and a retired Air Force colonel when it ruled that a malpractice suit cannot be filed more than four years after an alleged injury. David Antoon, who had surgery at the Clinic in 2008, said the procedure to remove a cancerous prostate gland left him impotent and incontinent and was performed by doctors-in-training rather than the physician he thought would be his surgeon. The Clinic denies any wrongdoing related to the procedure and has also said that Antoon's injuries are well-known risks of his prostatectomy surgery and do not indicate anything was done incorrectly. (Zeltner, 10/28)

More than 300 people gathered Thursday night for an anti-abortion prayer vigil outside an abortion provider in central Phoenix as part of the 40 Days for Life cross-country bus tour. Phoenix is one of more than 125 cities in 50 states that will have been visited by the time the 40 Days for Life campaign, which started Sept. 28 in Washington, D.C., ends Nov. 6 in Falls Church, Virginia. (Frank, 10/28)

A clinical trial conducted at a Virginia hospital indicates that hospital-acquired infections can be reduced by using copper-infused linens and hard surfaces developed by a Richmond-based company. Sentara Leigh Hospital in Norfolk recently published the results of a 10-month clinical trial in which copper-infused linens and hard surfaces developed by Cupron Inc. were used in a wing of the hospital with 124 patient rooms. The areas where the copper-infused materials were used showed an 83 percent reduction in the bacteria C-difficile and a 78 percent overall reduction in “a host” of drug-resistant organisms including MRSA, Sentara said. (Reid Blackwell, 10/28)

The Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control office has identified a group of mosquitoes on Bethel Island that have tested positive for the West Nile virus. The group of mosquitoes bearing the virus were identified on Stone Road, between Sea Drift Drive and Slough Place, on Oct. 24. The announcement comes two months after mosquitoes bearing the West Nile virus were identified in the same location on Bethel Island. (Davis, 10/28)

An independent mental-health center that has served the Des Moines area for 47 years plans to join the state’s largest hospital and clinic system. Eyerly Ball Community Mental Health Services has signed a letter of intent to affiliate with the UnityPoint Health system, leaders of both organizations announced Friday. The planned move comes amid a national wave of independent clinics and medical practices joining large health systems. (Leys, 10/28)

Rejecting arguments that the records must be kept secret, a federal magistrate has ordered the Florida Department of Corrections to give a decade's worth of documents about drugs used in the state's lethal-injection procedure to lawyers representing seven Arizona Death Row inmates. Lawyers for the Arizona inmates and the First Amendment Coalition of Arizona in June filed a subpoena seeking years of records related to Florida's three-drug lethal injection protocol, including the types of drugs purchased, the strengths and amounts of the drugs, the expiration dates of the drugs and the names of suppliers. (10/28)

Doctors making house calls is a long-gone tradition that went away in the 1960s, but is slowly making a return as our population grows grayer. A 2012 Medicare pilot program called Independence at Home incentivized doctors to make house calls on frail elders in return for a share of the savings. In its first year, 8,400 patients treated at home nationwide saved Medicare more than $25 million - or $3,070 per patient. Legislation was filed by Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey last summer to expand the program and make it permanent. (Grosky, 10/29)

During the 2015-16 flu season, nearly 4,000 Ohioans were hospitalized for the flu, and many more more missed school and work while suffering from milder forms of the illness. That's why the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  (CDC) are urging flu shots this fall for anyone six months old and older. After all, this is the official start of the flu season in Ohio. (Washington, 10/28)