by Jan Moller and Bill Barrow,
The Times-Picayune
BATON ROUGE -- Louisiana
State and Tulane
universities appear close to a deal that would resolve long-standing tensions
over the governance of the $1.2 billion teaching hospital proposed for lower
Mid-City.
Officials with both schools confirmed Wednesday that their
respective boards plan to meet in the coming days to consider a draft
memorandum of understanding outlining how the non-profit corporation that is
proposed to run the hospital would function and who would sit on the board.
Tulane spokeswoman Debbie Grant said its board will meet
Friday afternoon to consider the proposal. LSU System spokesman Charles Zewe said its board will hold a separate meeting Monday
afternoon.
Officials who spoke about the possible deal declined to
reveal details.
State Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine confirmed
that the schools have reached an agreement in principle, but said the
memorandum is still being drafted. Levine has mediated multiple negotiating
sessions involving LSU System President John Lombardi and Tulane University
President Scott Cowen.
Levine said some finer points of the agreement could
change as the language is drafted and submitted to each school for final
review. He said he plans to present the plan publicly by the end of the week,
before the boards weigh in.
Zewe declined to say whether
Lombardi plans to recommend that the LSU board adopt the latest memorandum.
"I don't want to speculate on what Dr. Lombardi will or will not
recommend to the board," Zewe said. "The
board members are aware of the issues and will express their concerns and
their comments on Monday."
If both schools' boards approve the proposal, it could
mean the end to an impasse that dates back nearly a year, when serious
discussions began over how best to govern the 424-bed facility that would
replace Charity
Hospital and serve as a
key training ground for health-care workers.
Although LSU, Tulane and the state all agreed on the need
for a non-profit corporation to operate the hospital, deep differences emerged
over who should have control. LSU said that it should be in charge and that
Tulane should be excluded from the board, because it runs a private hospital
that would be a direct competitor.
Tulane insisted on having a seat on the board as a way to
protect its ability to train medical students and residents.
LSU softened its stance in recent weeks and proposed to
give Tulane a seat on the board, but insisted that it should remain largely
in charge of the hospital and responsible for paying back the debt that would
be issued to build it.
With the two sides deadlocked and barely communicating,
House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Algiers, proposed legislation -- House Bill 830
-- that would strip control of the hospital from LSU and give it to an
independent board with representation from all the New Orleans-area schools
that would use the hospital to train their students.
Tucker's bill -- which has support from Tulane but is
strongly opposed by LSU -- passed the House but never came up for a hearing
in the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, which held its last scheduled
meeting of the legislative session on Wednesday.
The speaker said his bill is not necessarily dead, and
could still be revived if the tentative truce breaks down.
"My goal isn't necessarily to pass a bill,"
Tucker said. "My goal is to get this hospital moving."
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/06/lsu_tulane_close_to_agreement.html
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LSU, Tulane Near Agreement On Teaching Hospital
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Louisiana State and Tulane universities may be
close to a proposal that could settle disagreement over who should run the
$1.2 billion teaching hospital proposed for lower Mid-City.
Neither Tulane spokeswoman Debbie Grant nor LSU System
spokesman
Charles Zewe would give details,
but Tulane's board will consider the proposal Friday,
and LSU's on Monday.
State Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine confirms
that the schools have an agreement in principle, but says a memorandum of
understanding is still being drafted.
LSU runs Louisiana's
public hospitals, and wants to be in charge of the nonprofit corporation that
would run this one. Tulane wants a seat on the board, but LSU has opposed
that, saying Tulane's private hospital would be a direct competitor.
http://www.wdsu.com/news/19789527/detail.html
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LSU School of Medicine considers options for
resident training
By Anna Heumann
The future of LSU's School
of Medicine, currently located in New Orleans, has been
the subject of rumors and confusion. Recently, there has been much
speculation about relocating some of LSU's med school operations from New Orleans to Baton
Rouge - speculation that was, in part, fuelled by an
ad by the Louisiana Health Sciences Center Foundation. As a result, renewed
concerns leave many faculty and residents unsure about their jobs, homes and
stability if LSU does move its medical, nursing, allied health programs,
graduate studies and basic science training and research labs of out of New
Orleans.
Hurricanes and an aging infrastructure have taken down
both of the major state run hospitals: Charity
Hospital in New
Orleans and Earl K. Long Hospital in Baton
Rouge. The inability of the hospitals to facilitate
resident training is creating speculation that LSU medical students and
faculty in New Orleans
may have to relocate north to the capital city.
The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina created the first push
to move the LSU Medical School
out of New Orleans to Baton Rouge. However, during Hurricane
Gustav, it was discovered that Earl K. Long lacked up-to-date hospital
technology and infrastructure, prompting an evacuation of many patients to
private hospitals in New Orleans.
Dr. Larry H. Hollier, chancellor
of the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, recently told Tiger Weekly
that he will continue "to dismiss these attempts to move" from New
Orleans.
"It simply is not feasible to move the schools; it
would be massively expensive to try to duplicate our buildings, research
labs, etcetera in Baton Rouge," said Hollier,
who claims he will continue to fight any attempts to relocate the LSU School
of Medicine.
However, Hollier's voice can be
heard narrating the aforementioned LSU foundation advertisement, which hints
at the possibility of a relocation for at least some of LSU's med school
operations.
House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Algiers, reiterated Hollier's position that the LSU Medical
School is staying put.
"LSU is going no place. They have a billion dollars worth of
infrastructure" in New Orleans,
Tucker told the Times Picayune in an interview.
According to Hollier, the
central concern in the matter is an issue of cost effectiveness and
excellence.
"We all recognize that to remain a truly competitive
school of medicine, we need a major teaching hospital in New Orleans" said Hollier.
The discussion over how, where and if Charity Hospital
should be rebuilt in New Orleans has prompted LSU Medical
School officials to
look elsewhere for students' residencies. No matter what plan is created to
rebuild Charity
Hospital, having enough
beds to meet the needs for LSU training residents will continue to be an
issue.
LSU has already announced its plans to close Earl K. Long Hospital
in Baton Rouge.
The patients previously seen at Earl K. Long and the medical training
components of that facility will be moved to Our Lady of the Lake Regional
Medical Center,
a private hospital in the area.
According to the Advocate, K. Scott Wester,
OLOL chief executive officer, described the collaboration between the Lake and LSU as "the right relationship at the
right time."
In addition, LSU residents will be assigned to various
clinics in Baton Rouge
for outpatient work.
Patients who qualified under private health care
insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, or Disproportionate Share and were previously
tended to by LSU
Medical School
students should still receive the same health care under the OLOL
collaboration with LSU.
At this time, the fate and future home of LSU's med school
operations are still undecided. However, it is evident that building a new
complex in Baton Rouge instead of New Orleans would be a drastic change, but there may be
no other option if New Orleans
cannot provide an adequate teaching facility for resident training. If
relocation does occur, it could potentially endanger the School of Medicine's
centralization in New Orleans
and force many faculty and student residents to relocate.
Although rumors of relocation are rampant, Hollier has dismissed much of the speculation and insists
that the LSU health system will undergo "regionalization not relocation."
http://tigerweekly.com/article/06-17-2009/11484
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LSUHSC New Orleans | 06.17.09
New Orleans,
LA – The Department of
Psychiatry at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Medicine has
been chosen to receive the prestigious 2009 Distinguished Partners in
Education Award by the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
and the Louisiana Department of Education. One of only 11 organizations
statewide receiving the award, the LSUHSC Department of Psychiatry was
nominated by John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award recipient Doris Voitier, Superintendent of the St. Bernard Parish Public
School System. The LSUHSC Department of Psychiatry worked with Voitier, her faculty, and St. Bernard students and their
families, to provide the mental health services and emotional support that
were instrumental in helping the St. Bernard Unified School open in November,
2005, 11 weeks after Hurricane Katrina. The award, being presented on June 17, 2009
at 6:00 p.m. at the Lod
Cook Conference
Center on the LSU campus in Baton Rouge, is given annually to a select number of
businesses, industries, associations, or individuals who have made
significant contributions to education in Louisiana.
The LSUHSC Department of Psychiatry has a strong
commitment to collaborating with and supporting schools, especially those in
areas heavily devastated by the disaster following Hurricane Katrina. LSUHSC
Psychiatry faculty have provided training on trauma
focused interventions, consultation, and delivery of desperately needed
longer term services. The need for trauma-focused services has been great. In
Fall 2006, the LSUHSC
Louisiana Rural
Trauma Services
Center and the
re-opening schools used the NCTSN Hurricane Screening and Assessment Tool,
modified for cultural sensitivity. Approximately 49% of 4th-12th graders in New Orleans, St.
Bernard, and Plaquemines Parishes, in the most heavily devastated areas, met
cut-off for mental health referral; 12% independently requested counseling.
Twenty-nine percent of younger children met cut-off for mental health
services; 36% of their parents requested counseling.
The training, consultation, evaluation, and treatment
services being provided by the LSUHSC Department of Psychiatry, in
collaboration with schools, are extremely important in supporting the
resiliency and recovery of not only the students, but in supporting the staff
– teachers, social workers, counselors, school psychologists, and school
nurses – and improving the school environment.
“We believe that the LSUHSC programs contribute positively
to child, adolescent and family mental health at a time when many children
are still recovering from the aftereffects of the 2005 hurricanes and have
experienced subsequent traumatic experiences,” notes Dr. Howard Osofsky, Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry at LSU
Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Medicine.
http://www.medschool.lsuhsc.edu/Psychiatry/
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Billy Arcement
Anyone with any clear sense of reality understands that
government programs are riddled with abuse, cost overruns and outright fraud.
We have thousands of programs to back this statement. Now, our congressional
leaders are proposing a government-run universal health-care system. I
strongly support everyone being able to receive good medical treatment. But,
I also strongly oppose a government-run system. Medicare and Medicaid have
astronomical amounts of waste. Fraudulent claims, unneeded tests, claims for
services not provided and systemic abuses by individuals on Medicaid are
everyday occurrences and add billions to annual costs.
Now imagine with me how much more waste and fraud will
occur when we go to a “socialistic style” of health-care system. The elderly
will be denied treatment and allowed to die; services will be rationed; and
the time to receive care will be extended by months or years. We have ample
evidence in the world to support this reality. Replicating failed systems
makes no sense, yet we plod on toward a system with unsustainable costs that
will end in bankruptcy.
There are two other elements of this story no one in the
media is talking about. Unless taxpayers give them life, there will never be
a conversation surfacing. Members of Congress and the president are
privileged to have the best medical-care system in the world. It’s eons above
what the average citizen can afford to have. Do you think they will subject
themselves to the same system they are creating for the rest of us? Will they
be denied treatment when they are old? Will they be denied any treatment they
seek? Will they stand in line or wait years for the care they need? The
answer is a resounding NO.
The second concern should be that this bill will probably
give coverage to the 10-20 million illegals living
in this country. It’s going on now in such bankrupt states as California. What gives
you the idea that the extension will not be universal with this bill? Ever
heard of buying votes with government doles?
We’d better be alarmed over what is happening in Washington and let
elected officials know how we feel NOW. This letter is the start of my
personal campaign. We need a non-political, well-thought-out, sensible and
cost-effective approach to solving this dilemma. But, I suppose if you
believe that Washington
politicians can do anything non-political, make well thought out sensible
decisions, and keep cost down, you probably also believe in the tooth fairy!!
Billy Arcement
professional speaker/consultant
Prairieville
http://www.2theadvocate.com/opinion/48317927.html
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The Associated Press
(AP) — BATON ROUGE, La.
- Five state employees, including the head of the Department of Social
Services, have tested positive for swine flu, the state health department
said on Wednesday.
DSS Secretary Kristy Nichols began experiencing flu-like
symptoms last Wednesday but returned to work following several days of rest,
agency spokesman Trey Williams said. Another 30 workers in the agency's
downtown Baton Rouge
office building have had flu-like symptoms. The Office of Public Health was
involved in an information session for DSS workers to inform them about
preventing its spread, Williams said.
Nichols testified in a legislative hearing at the Capitol
on Wednesday, and broke down coughing several times.
A state lawmaker later criticized Nichols for appearing at
the committee if she still had a cough-even if Nichols thought she wasn't
contagious. Rep. Karen Carter Peterson, who sat next to Nichols during the
testimony, said she only learned after the committee meeting that Nichols had
the virus.
Peterson said she was concerned she might have been
infected. The New Orleans Democrat said she wanted to be tested for the
virus-known as H1N1-by the state Department of Health and Hospitals.
"Why was (Nichols) around people? She's still
coughing," Peterson, D-New Orleans, told fellow lawmakers on the House
floor.
Peterson's questions triggered more queries from other
House members who wondered if they'd been infected-leading Speaker Jim
Tucker, R-Terrytown, to invite the state's top
health officials onto the floor to answer questions.
Alan Levine, DHH secretary, and Jimmy Guidry, state health
officer, both downplayed the seriousness of the swine flu, saying it's no
more dangerous than normal flu. Levine told lawmakers Nichols followed proper
procedure, staying home from work after first showing symptoms.
"I think it's highly unlikely that she's contagious
at this point," Levine said.
The incident also triggered some jokes.
"Mr. Speaker, I move the House stand adjourned until
it's fully quarantined," said Rep. Jared Brossett,
D-New Orleans
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/national-25/1245280601129680.xml&storylist=louisiana
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Tom Planchet / Eyewitness News
BATON ROUGE – The State Department of Social Services has
confirmed five cases of swine flu within their office in downtown Baton
Rouge, though a spokesman said the department believes as many as 30 of their
workers have experienced symptoms similar to what you'd see with the H1N1
virus.
One of those who had a confirmed case of H1N! was DSS Secretary Kristy Nichols, who returned to work
following a few days of rest.
Trey Williams, a department spokesman, said that Nichols
began to experience flu-like symptoms last Wednesday morning and followed the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and stayed home while
still experiencing symptoms.
DSS estimates that around 30 employees in the Iberville Building have experienced or are
experiencing flu-like symptoms.
All DSS employees in the Iberville building were informed
by e-mail after the results were confirmed and encouraged to stay home if
they began experiencing any flu-like symptoms.
http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl061709tpswine.8ded8716.html
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by Jan Moller, The
Times-Picayune
BATON ROUGE -- A bill that would raise $118 million for
higher education by delaying a scheduled income tax break received new life
on the Senate floor this afternoon when its language was tacked on to another
bill.
Senate President Joel Chaisson
II, D-Destrehan, made the move as the House and Senate remain deeply divided
over state spending with barely a week left in the session. Although the $28
billion budget has already gone to Gov. Bobby Jindal's
desk, lawmakers are trying to pass additional spending measures that would
make up some of the budget cuts for health care, higher education and other
programs.
The Senate approved a similar tax bill -- Senate Bill 335
by Sen. Lydia Jackson, D-Shreveport -- earlier this month. But that measure
has languished on the House calendar without a hearing, as Speaker Jim
Tucker, R-Algiers, believes it is unconstitutional because revenue-raising
measures must begin in the House.
To avoid that problem, Chaisson
had the language of Jackson's
bill amended into House Bill 689 by Rep. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New
Orleans. Senators approved the amended version 29-6, which sends it back to
the House for agreement with the changes made by the Senate.
"Putting this amendment on a House bill takes away
their argument that this bill can't be a Senate bill," Chaisson said. "It gives those House members an
opportunity to vote."
The bill faces extremely long odds in the lower chamber,
where 55 members -- a majority -- are already on record as opposing the idea.
Jindal has promised a veto if it reaches his desk.
Chaisson said the bill, which
would freeze personal income tax deductions at current levels until 2012,
does not constitute a tax increase as critics have charged. "The people
who itemize will get the same deduction next year that they got this
year," Chaisson said.
But Sen. B.L. "Buddy" Shaw, R-Shreveport, said
the bill will be viewed as a tax increase. "I want you to know that a
tax is a tax, and deferring a tax (cut) is not playing fair with the folks
who you promised it to three or four years ago," Shaw said.
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/06/senate_revives_bill_to_freeze.htm
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Michael Luke / Eyewitness News
WWLTV
NEW ORLEANS – Local
sheriffs are scheduled to hold a rally outside of the mental health
institution New Orleans Adolescent Hospital
to implore state leaders not to close the facility and move the primary
services to Southeast
Louisiana Hospital
in Mandeville.
In an effort to cut costs state officials have proposed
merging NOAH and Southeast, which would close the New Orleans hospital, but
the local sheriffs – Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff Marlin, Orleans Civil
Sheriff Paul Valteau, St. Bernard Sheriff Jack
Stephens and Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand – said the cuts and
closure would move mental health care too far from the New Orleans metro
area.
“The jails are overrun with people with chronic mental
illness; that’s where they are going for treatment, and that is not what jail
is for,” said Cecile Tebo, from the New Orleans
Crisis Unit. She added the death of
NOPD officer Nicola Cotton, who was shot and killed by a man who had suffered
for years from mental illness, as a prime example as the local need for
mental health care.
As sheriffs fight to keep NOAH open long-term, the
hospital may stay open for a year, with state lawmakers recently shifting $14
million to the hospital, though it still needs final approval amid a $1.4
billion budget shortfall.
Officials from the Department of Health and Hospitals have
said the merger would save the state $9 million, and two clinics – one on the
east bank and one on the west bank – would be opened in the city, along with
a mobile clinic in St. Bernard Parish.
“We’re not taking anything away from the city of New
Orleans,” Sybil Richard, DHH deputy secretary, said on March 27 in front of
the New Orleans City Council. “We’re not cutting any services.”
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/wwl061709mlnoah.bdda12.html#
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By Jan Moller
Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- A controversial proposal to restrict in-school
dentistry for poor children was overhauled Wednesday by a Senate committee
and sent it to the floor with new language that leaves the issue almost
entirely to state regulators.
The Senate Health and Welfare Committee unanimously agreed
to the changes to House Bill 687 by Rep. Kevin Pearson, R-Slidell, marking
the second time the bill has been reworked to address concerns raised by its
opponents.
The heavily lobbied bill started out as an effort to ban
mobile dental clinics in schools, which began popping up in Louisiana late last year after the state
increased the rate it pays dentists to treat children on Medicaid.
The Louisiana Dental Association and other backers of the
bill said the mobile clinics are unsanitary, discourage parental involvement
and amount to "third world" dentistry. Dental services should be
provided in private dental offices, which allow for follow-up visits and
ongoing relationships between dentists and families, the backers said.
"Unregulated in-school dentistry without parental
involvement . . . is not the answer," said Ward Blackwell, the dental
association's executive director.
But opponents of the bill, including the Federal Trade
Commission, said the mobile clinics have generated no complaints and serve a
crucial role by providing services for thousands of poor children who
otherwise might not get dental care. More than 400,000 children in Louisiana who were
eligible for free care under the Medicaid program did not see a dentist last
year.
The opponents said regulations should be left to the
Louisiana Board of Dentistry.
Facing uncertain prospects on the House floor, the bill
was rewritten. Instead of banning the mobile clinics, the version that came
to the Senate directed the dentistry board to draw up detailed regulations
governing everything from standards of care, sanitation and parental
involvement to what kind of insurance dentists should be required to carry.
Supporters said the House changes represented a
compromise, but opponents said the bill was too specific in its directions to
the dentistry board.
Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa,
amended the measure to change a "shall" to a "may," which
would give the dentistry board almost complete discretion in drawing up new
rules.
Barry Ogden, executive director of the dentistry board,
said the new regulations should be finished by mid-August. The health-care
committees in the House and Senate then would get a chance to review them
before they could take effect.
Ogden
said the board was already drawing up new regulations when the bill was
filed, and that there is no need to pass a law. "There is no need for
another legislative mandate," he said.
The change mollified opponents of the bill, while Pearson
acknowledged that the latest version is a far cry from what he started out
trying to pass.
"We're OK," he said. "You can't always get
what you want."
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/capital/index.ssf?/base/news-7/124530245461650.xml&coll=1
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by Jan Moller, The
Times-Picayune
BATON ROUGE -- A Senate committee today defanged a
controversial bill that seeks to curb in-school dentistry for poor children,
sending it to the floor with new language that leaves the issue almost
entirely to state regulators.
The Senate Health and Welfare Committee agreed unanimously
to the changes to House Bill 687 by Rep. Kevin Pearson, R-Slidell, marking
the second time the bill has been reworked to address concerns raised by
opponents.
The heavily lobbied bill started out as an effort to ban
mobile dental clinics in schools, which began popping up in Louisiana late last year after the state
increased the rate it pays dentists to treat children on Medicaid. The
Louisiana Dental Association and other backers of the bill said the mobile
clinics were unsanitary, discouraged parental involvement and amounted to
"third world" dentistry.
But opponents of the bill said the mobile clinics have
generated no complaints and serve a vital role by providing services for
thousands of poor children who might not otherwise have access to care. Any
regulations should be left to the Louisiana Board of Dentistry.
Facing uncertain prospects on the House floor, the bill
was rewritten so that instead of banning the mobile clinics, it directed the
dentistry board to draw up detailed regulations governing everything from
standards of care and sanitation to what kind of insurance dentists should be
required to carry.
Supporters of the bill said the House changes represented
a compromise, but opponents said they were still too specific in telling
regulators how they should do their job. But with an amendment in committee
that changed a "shall" to a "may," Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, altered the scope of the legislation
so that now the board has almost discretion to draw up new regulations.
Barry Ogden, executive director of the dentistry board,
said the new regulations should be finished by August. The health-care
committees in the House and Senate would then get a chance to review them
before they can take effect.
The change mollified opponents of the bill, while Pearson
acknowledged that the latest version of his bill is a far cry from what he
started out trying to pass.
"We're OK," he said. "You can't always get
what you want."
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/06/bill_to_regulate_inschool_dent.html
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Shriners Hospital open house is Saturday
Shreveport Times | 06.18.09
By Alisa Stingley
Faced with an uncertain future, Shriners
Hospitals for Children in Shreveport
wants the community to know more about what makes the 87-year-old institution
special.
An open house will be from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. The
hospital is at Kings Highway
and Samford
Avenue.
There will be guided tours of the hospital, free hot dogs
and snacks, and face painting, as well as a large-scale model train display
by the Ark-La-Tex Modular Club. Also on hand will be members of the El Karubah Shriners, who will be
offering rides in their mini-cars.
“Saturday’s open house simply gives us an opportunity to
better show the Shreveport
community the types of programs and services offered by this historic
facility,” said Kim Green, administrator.
Founded in 1922, the Shreveport
Shriners Hospital is the world’s first Shriners Hospital. Specializing in orthopaedic conditions including scoliosis, cerebral
palsy, osteogenesis imperfecta,
and hip, hand, and foot disorders, the Shreveport Hospital
has provided care to a global population of over 55,000 children.
But the hospital is among six that national Shriners officials may close to save money. Shriners will vote on proposals related to the hospitals
during the organization’s annual meeting July 6-8 in San Antonio. The national trustees in March
agreed to put closing hospitals to a vote because of a mounting budget
shortfall.
The Shriners organization
depends on an endowment to generate money for the hospital system’s $850
million a year budget. The endowment has declined due to the stock market
fall.
However, Ralph Semb, chairman of
the national hospital board of trustees, told The Times recently there may be
talks with LSU Health Sciences
Center to keep the
hospital open. LSUHSC officials have not commented on any discussions.
The open house will also feature a photo exhibition by
Christian Berg, director of public relations and photographer for the Shreveport Hospital. Among the photos included in
the collection is “Sifting Sand,” a photo of a young boy playing in the
hospital’s playground sandbox. The photo was selected by the National
Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions for “Champions,”
its 2009 traveling exhibition of 50 photographs. Receiving special
recognition as a top 10 photo, “Sifting Sand” was chosen from nearly 250
photographs submitted to NACHRI by children’s hospitals across the country.
The exhibit will travel the country and is on display this
week on Capitol Hill in the rotunda of the Russell
Senate Office
Building in Washington, D.C.
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20090618/NEWS01/90618023
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New Orleans CityBusiness |
06.18.09
by The Associated Press
WASHINGTON
— Delays and disputes bogged down a Senate panel considering the details of
remaking the nation's $2.5 trillion health care system.
The first formal drafting and voting session on Sen.
Edward M. Kennedy's sweeping legislation was given over Wednesday to six
hours of speechmaking by senators. Nothing was accomplished on the bill
itself, and there were suggestions that a goal of completing committee action
before the congressional recess July 4 might not be met.
A separate and even more critical Senate committee delayed
its own voting timeline as lawmakers struggled to slash costs to under $1
trillion over 10 years.
If things keep going the way they did Wednesday, it
doesn't bode well for President Barack Obama's goal of signing legislation
this fall to rein in spiraling health costs and extend care to 50 million
uninsured Americans.
"This is the first time that I had to kind of say we haven't
met a deadline," said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, top Republican on the key Senate
Finance Committee.
The Finance Committee was supposed to release draft
legislation Wednesday and begin voting on it next week. But the committee
announced that votes would wait, possibly until after July 4, as senators
sought to retool their proposals to cut the cost by more than one-third, from
an initial $1.6 trillion to less than $1 trillion.
Of the five major panels, including Kennedy's, working on
health care, Finance has the best odds of coming up with a bipartisan
proposal that could overcome gathering opposition.
"We'll be ready when we're ready, but we're not there
yet," said Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.
With Kennedy absent from the Capitol after a diagnosis of
brain cancer, his Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee met under
the leadership of Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. Senators were considering a bill
topping 600 pages, plus 388 amendments, but with the most contentious issues
— whether to create a new public plan to compete with the private market, and
whether to require employers to cover their workers — still unwritten.
The legislation would create a new insurance marketplace
where people could shop for coverage plans with help from government
subsidies.
As written, it costs some $1 trillion but still leaves 37
million people uninsured, and Republicans are deeply skeptical. The health
committee is scheduled to meet daily and was supposed to finalize the bill by
the end of next week, but after Wednesday's session Dodd backed away from
that deadline.
"We'll see how it goes. I'm interested in getting
this done but I'm interested in getting it right," Dodd said. "I'm
not time-driven to the point where at all cost that has to be done that day."
Committee hearings in the House are set to begin next
week.
http://www.neworleanscitybusiness.com/uptotheminute.cfm?recid=25341
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The New York Times | 06.18.09
Patients who underwent a popular form of weight loss
surgery developed kidney stones, a painful and recurring condition, at almost
double the rate of obese patients who didn’t have the operation, according to
one of the largest studies to examine the rate of complications from
bariatric surgery.
Almost 8 percent of obese patients who underwent the
gastric bypass procedure known as Roux-en-Y (pronounced ROO-on-why) had
kidney stones within two years of the operation. In comparison, kidney stones
developed in just under 5 percent of similar patients who did not undergo
surgery, according to the study, published in the June issue of The Journal
of Urology.
But the authors of the study cautioned that the findings
should not be considered “an indictment” of the Roux-en-Y procedure, because
the long-term health benefits for obese patients are significant. Weight-loss
surgery can reduce their risk for heart disease, diabetes and other
life-threatening diseases.
“The takeaway message is not that bariatric surgery is a
bad thing because patients are twice as likely to get a kidney stone, but to
recognize they’re at increased risk and give them appropriate counseling,”
said Dr. Brian R. Matlaga, an assistant professor
of urology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and first author of
the study. “You’re saving a patient from all the things we know are
associated with obesity: diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep
apnea, pregnancy complications.”
Dr. Matlaga and his colleagues
used a health insurance database to identify 4,639 patients who underwent
Roux-en-Y surgery between 2002 and 2006, and compared them with a similar
group of obese patients who did not undergo the surgery. They used claims
data to see which patients were diagnosed with or treated for kidney stones.
Some 7.65 percent of the surgery patients were diagnosed
with kidney stones, compared with 4.63 percent of the comparison group. The
researchers calculated that surgery increased the risk of developing the
painful, chronic condition by 71 percent.
Kidney stones were one of the well known complications of
an earlier type of gastric bypass surgery, the Jejunoileal
bypass procedure, which was associated with so many health problems that it
has been abandoned.
Most people who suffer from kidney stones have recurring
problems that send them to the emergency room doubled over in pain. To reduce
the risk, Dr. Matlaga suggested patients drink at
least six to eight glasses of fluids a day, cut down on salt and animal
protein and reduce consumption of foods like black tea, nuts, okra and some
leafy vegetables that are high in oxalates, which can form into kidney
stones. They should not reduce their calcium intake, since calcium binds with
oxalate and flushes it from the body, he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/health/18stones.html?_r=1&ref=health
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The New York Times | 06.18.09
By ABBY ELLIN
LIKE almost every dieter in America, Wendy Bassett has used
all sorts of weight-loss products. Nothing worked, she said, until she tried Sensa: granules she scatters on almost everything she
eats, and which are supposed to make dieters less hungry by enhancing the
smell and taste of food.
“Every time I touch a piece of food, I pour it on,” said
Ms. Bassett, 34, an accountant in Tyler,
Tex. She has been using Sensa since February. So far, she said, she has lost 30
pounds.
The maker of Sensa claims that
its effectiveness is largely related to smell: the heightened scent and
flavor of food that has been sprinkled with Sensa
stimulate the olfactory bulb — the organ that transmits smell from the nose
to the brain — to signal the “satiety center” of the hypothalamus. Hormones
that suppress appetite are then released.
But can the manipulation of smell really lead to weight
loss? A handful of niche products would have you believe just that.
In addition to Sensa, which has
been available since last summer, there is SlimScents,
aromatherapy diet pens filled with fruity or minty odors; a peppermint spray
called Happy Scent; and the vanilla-doused Aroma Patch, which you wear on
your hand, wrist or chest.
Last month, Compellis
Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, Mass., began human trials on a nasal spray
designed to do the opposite of what Sensa does: to
curb the appetite by blocking rather than enhancing smell.
“Eighty percent of what you perceive as taste is actually smell,” said Christopher Adams, a molecular biologist and
the company’s founder. “The hypothesis is that if we can alter your sense of
smell we can make food less palatable, because the hedonic effect — that is,
the pleasurable effect you get from eating chocolate — won’t be there.”
Using smell to manipulate appetite may be an appealing
premise, but only a few studies have been conducted, and some experts have
doubts.
“There’s been a theory around for a number of years that
if you saturate your sensory system that you’ll not be as hungry,” said Dr.
Richard L. Doty, the director of the Smell and Taste
Center at the University of
Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philadelphia.
“There needs to be more research done.”
Mark I. Friedman, associate director of Monell Chemical Senses
Center in Philadelphia, said that while the sight,
taste or smell of food may result in the release of insulin and an increase
in metabolism, “those kinds of effects are short-lived. If you constantly
smelled something you would adapt to the odor, and you wouldn’t smell it
anymore.”
But Sensa’s maker, Dr. Alan
Hirsch, is confident that his product — which contains malodextrin,
tricalcium phosphate, silica and natural and
artificial flavors — works.
“A large part of the reason that you feel full is your
brain interpreting that you’ve smelled it and tasted it,” said Dr. Hirsch, a
neurologist, psychiatrist and the founder of the Smell and Taste Treatment
and Research Foundation in Chicago.
Dr. Hirsch has conducted several studies on smell, taste
and appetite. In the early 1990s, he gave 3,193 patients inhalers containing
aromatic ingredients, which they inhaled whenever they were hungry. They were
instructed to keep their normal diet and exercise routines, and each month
for a period of six months they were given new inhalers. The participants
lost an average of 5 pounds a month, he said.
Around that same time, Dr. Hirsch licensed this research
to the company that created SlimScents. (Shortly
thereafter, he revoked the license, because of business disagreements, he
said, although the company has continued to market the product.) Later, Dr.
Hirsch went a step further by focusing on both smell and taste. In 2005, he
gave 1,436 patients granules called Tastant
crystals. His theory was that these granules, later marketed as Sensa, would trick the brain into thinking it was full.
According to the study, the average weight loss was 30.5 pounds over six
months, with a 5-point drop in Body Mass Index.
Kimberly Tobman, a spokeswoman
for Sensa, said that “hundreds of thousands” of
customers have used it. It is available at TrySensa.com and on television
shopping networks, and costs $59 for a one-month supply, $145 for three
months and $235 for six months. There are also several blogs devoted to the
product.
But there are detractors. As a woman named Mikaela wrote on www.real
-customer-comments.com, a site devoted to weight loss, on April 3: “It didn’t
make me feel full and decided against continuing it.”
But other researchers have found a link between scent and
weight loss.
About a year and a half ago, Bryan Raudenbush,
an associate professor of psychology at Wheeling
Jesuit University
in Wheeling, W. Va.,
asked 40 people to sniff peppermint every two hours for five days. For
another five days he gave them a placebo. During the week they sniffed
peppermint, they consumed 1,800 fewer calories.
LAST year, after hearing about Dr. Raudenbush’s
and Dr. Hirsch’s work, Donna Schilder, a business
and life coach in Long Beach,
Calif., brought Peppermint
Happy Scent to market. “Whenever clients feel an urge to eat something, they
take it out, shake it and smell it,” said Ms. Schilder,
who charges $5.50 for each jar of silicon beads, which have been dipped in
scented oil. She stressed that she did not make any promises about her
product.
Mark Cohen, the founder of SlimScents,
an aromatherapy inhalant, guarantees that his product works; he is prepared
to offer it free for six months (minus shipping and handling) or until a person
loses 2.5 percent of his or her body weight.
“We’ve never found a person who used the product correctly
and didn’t lose weight,” he said.
Still, Dr. Friedman and others point out the lack of
research supporting the link between smell and weight loss.
“There’s no scientific evidence that smelling or tasting
flavors is going to suppress your intake over a nutritionally significant
interval,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/fashion/18skin.html?ref=health
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PHILADELPHIA—According
to results of a study published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of
the American Association for Cancer Research, men with prostate cancer who
consumed the active compounds in green tea demonstrated a significant
reduction in serum markers predictive of prostate cancer progression.
“The investigational agent used in the trial, Polyphenon E (provided by Polyphenon
Pharma) may have the potential to lower the
incidence and slow the progression of prostate cancer,” said James A. Cardelli, Ph.D., professor and director of basic and
translational research in the Feist-Weiller Cancer
Center, LSU Health
Sciences Center-Shreveport.
Green tea is the second most popular drink in the world,
and some epidemiological studies have shown health benefits with green tea,
including a reduced incidence of prostate cancer, according to Cardelli. However, some human trials have found
contradictory results. The few trials conducted to date have evaluated the
clinical efficacy of green tea consumption and few studies have evaluated the
change in biomarkers, which might predict disease progression.
Cardelli and colleagues
conducted this open-label, single-arm, phase II clinical trial to determine
the effects of short-term supplementation with green tea’s active compounds
on serum biomarkers in patients with prostate cancer. The biomarkers include hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), vascular endothelial
growth factor (VEGF) and prostate specific antigen (PSA). HGF and VEGF are
good prognostic indicators of metastatic disease.
The study included 26 men, aged 41 to 72 years, diagnosed
with prostate cancer and scheduled for radical prostatectomy. Patients
consumed four capsules containing Polyphenon E
until the day before surgery—four capsules are equivalent to about 12 cups of
normally brewed concentrated green tea, according to Cardelli.
The time of study for 25 of the 26 patients ranged from 12 days to 73 days,
with a median time of 34.5 days.
Findings showed a significant reduction in serum levels of
HGF, VEGF and PSA after treatment, with some patients demonstrating
reductions in levels of greater than 30 percent, according to the
researchers.
Cardelli and colleagues found
other biomarkers were also positively affected. There were only a few
reported side effects associated with this study, and liver function remained
normal.
Results of a recent year-long clinical trial conduced by
researchers in Italy demonstrated consumption of green tea polyphenols reduced the risk of developing prostate
cancer in men with high-grade prostate intraepithelial neoplasia
(HGPIN).
“These studies are just the beginning and a lot of work
remains to be done, however, we think that the use of tea polyphenols
alone or in combination with other compounds currently used for cancer
therapy should be explored as an approach to prevent cancer progression and
recurrence,” Cardelli said.
William G. Nelson, V., M.D., Ph.D., professor of oncology,
urology and pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, believes
the reduced serum biomarkers of prostate cancer may be attributable to some
sort of benefit relating to green tea components.
“Unfortunately, this trial was not a randomized trial,
which would have been needed to be more sure that the observed changes were
truly attributable to the green tea components and not to some other
lifestyle change (better diet, taking vitamins, etc.) men undertook in
preparation for surgery,” added Nelson, who is also a senior editor for
Cancer Prevention Research. However, “this trial is provocative enough to
consider a more substantial randomized trial.”
In collaboration with Columbia
University in New York City, the researchers are
currently conducting a comparable trial among patients with breast cancer.
They also plan to conduct further studies to identify the factors that could
explain why some patients responded more dramatically to Polyphenon
E than others. Cardelli suggested that additional
controlled clinical trials should be done to see if combinations of different
plant polyphenols were more effective than Polyphenon E alone.
“There is reasonably good evidence that many cancers are
preventable, and our studies using plant-derived substances support the idea
that plant compounds found in a healthy diet can play a role in preventing
cancer development and progression,” said Cardelli.
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