So-Called Hospital Conversion Headed To Governor’s Desk

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It didn’t look like it was going to happen, but a bill that would make it easier for private, for-profit hospitals to take over nonprofit hospitals was on its way to the governor’s desk late Wednesday. The so-called hospital conversion bill would help for-profit hospitals, like Texas-based Tenet Healthcare Corporation, come into Connecticut and acquire physician practices without being in violation of current law. Continue reading the story by ctnewsjunkie here.  

Disparities

Caregivers Of People With Special Needs Seek State Residential Placements

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When Velma Williams-Estes became a widow three years ago, it really hit her that she had to plan for permanent care for her daughter Deborah Ann Williams, 46, who has Down syndrome. “I am scared,” Williams-Estes, 66, of Meriden, said. “Every day, every day, I pray to God that I’ll be here, that he will give me the strength and the stamina to be here for her entire life.”

To speak out for more residential placements for people like her daughter, Williams-Estes has joined Our Families Can’t Wait, an advocacy group formed last fall by Connecticut families who are waiting for homes and apartments to open for their children and grandchildren with intellectual disabilities. The advocacy group has been lobbying at the state Capitol to gain support for a $149 million proposal that would dramatically increase funding for new state-funded group homes, home support and community companion homes – licensed family homes for three or fewer people with intellectual disabilities. The group is receiving organizational help from the New England Health Care Employees Union, District 1199.

aid-in-dying

End-Of-Life Choice Should Be Law

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Jody Wynn Rodiger comes to the aid-in-dying movement as a lay person trained to minister to the dying. “I’ve watched people at the end of their lives,” said Rodiger. That includes 30 years ago, when she was living and ministering in New York City. “I lost a lot of friends to AIDS,” she said. “Medical science kept pushing drugs, and they were begging to go.”

Like 65 percent of the state’s residents, Rodiger, who is a mission collaboration administrator at the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut, would like to see a comprehensive aid-in-dying law, also known by proponents as “death with dignity” and – by its opponents — “assisted suicide.”

And though there are deep-pocketed opponents, this could be Connecticut’s year to join the nation’s five other states that allow terminally ill, mentally competent patients to end their own lives.

ALICE households

The ALICEs Among Us

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Novelette Bethea is a single mother of three, and a full-time college student who drives from her home in Hartford’s South End to work per diem at Gilead Community Services in Middletown. Bethea has lived through illness, foreclosure, and empty pantries.  Though she was uncomfortable doing so, she tried to apply for SNAP – food stamps – but she gave up. “Every time I called them they’d say they misplaced my paperwork,” she says. These days, if she has to go to a food pantry, she does.

Builiding A Health Claims Database

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By next August the state of Connecticut wants to have the last three years of health claims data in a database that will help individuals make better decisions about their health care. The database is supposed to give public health officials and consumers better information about how much a medical procedure will cost or how frequently certain medical services are accessed. The hope is it will give the state detailed information to help officials design various cost containment and quality improvement efforts. In New Hampshire, which already has a database, it’s helped public health officials understand better the frequency at which Medicaid patients were using the emergency room as a doctor’s office. In some of the more rural parts of New Hampshire, the emergency room was the only place to see a doctor, Jo Porter, deputy director of the Institute for Health Policy and Practice, said Thursday at a Capitol forum on All-Payer Claims Databases.

Center for Responsive Politics

‘End The Freeze On Gun Violence Research’

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Since Newtown, the country has witnessed at least seven mass shootings. The most recent was in Chicago, where suspects used a military-type rifle and a gun, injuring 13 people in a park, including a 3-year old boy, who was shot in the head. Earlier that same week, a shooter killed 12 people at the Navy Yard in Washington. Ironically, that same day Newtown family members and other gun legislation advocates were in the nation’s capital for a long-planned trip to lobby for tighter laws. After each shooting, there’s a sense of despair that these horrible events will just keep happening.

Stomach Pain? You’re Not Alone

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Complaints of abdominal pain from patients seeking treatment in hospital emergency rooms nationally rose 31.8 percent from 1999-2008, but about one-half of those patients were discharged without a diagnosis, according to data from the U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, the CDC reports that abdominal pain and chest pain continue to be the most common ailments for a visit to the ER for patients aged 15 years and over. Statistics show that about 7 million people aged 18 and older visit the ER each year with complaints of abdominal pain. In Connecticut, emergency room doctors concur that abdominal pain is among the top ailments treated and among the most difficult to diagnosis. “It is like finding a needle in a haystack, in which you think ‘Please let them not be the 50 percent where I can’t tell them what is wrong,’ ” said Dr. Jeff A. Finkelstein, director of Hartford Hospital’s emergency department. The hospital’s ER reported treating 1,674 cases of abdominal pain during the months of April and May. Because the abdominal area contains multiple organs: the stomach, small and large intestines, pancreas, liver and gallbladder, “abdominal pain is very challenging to find the specific cause in a short time frame,” said Finkelstein.

Insurance Department Finalizes Exchange Rates

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The question of cost has been on everyone’s mind since Connecticut first decided to set up its own health insurance exchange under Obamacare. On Monday, Connecticut residents got their first look at the unadjusted rates — meaning, the rates without the inclusion of offsetting government subsidies that will be made available to lower income families. Read the full report by Ctnewsjunkie here.

American Legacy Foundation

It’s Time To Cap Alcohol Marketing To Minors

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When it comes to alcohol advertisements, we could use an agreement similar to the one we have with Big Tobacco. But let’s put some punch behind it. Children are awash in media messages, and we keep missing opportunities to do the right thing. In 1998, then-Attorney General Richard Blumenthal led the way for officials from 46 states, the District of Columbia, and five territories to sign a Master Settlement Agreement with U.S. tobacco companies. In signing, tobacco companies agreed to stop marketing to young people, and the American Legacy Foundation was formed and began to discourage teens from smoking — often with edgy, hard-to-forget television ads.

Adam Lanza

Are Gamers Captives Of Virtual Violence?

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After Adam Lanza broke Connecticut’s heart last December, speculation about what made him do it ran the gamut from easy access to guns to the shooter’s difficulty dealing with peers. Some news articles mentioned that before his death, Lanza had shut himself in his mother’s Newtown basement and played violent video games. Only a few people took note. One, a 12-year old Newtown boy, started a “Played Out” movement to dump violent video games, and other towns – including Southington – followed suit. But mostly, gamers played on, secure in the knowledge that their passion was protected by the First Amendment.