healths

Kentucky Medicaid officials have suspended collection of co-payments by patients in managed care, a change they had ordered at the start of July. "The co-pays caught health providers by surprise and caused alarm among patients who didn't know about or understand the changes," reports Deborah Yetter of the Courier Journal . The Cabinet for Health and Family Services said on its Facebook page , "The only recent change to co-payments was removing the ability for managed-care organizations to waive co-pays," which the MCOs have typically done. "It has come to our attention that there has been inconsistent implementation of co-pays among MCOs. This has highlighted a need to suspend mandatory collection of co-pays." A man gets a prescription filled at Portland Family Health Center in Louisville. (Courier Journal photo by David R. Lutman) The initial change was part of Gov. Matt Bevin's new Medicaid plan, which a federal judge blocked on June 29. It wou...

Mitch McConnell and other leaders of the Senate's Republican majority (Associated Press photo by Jacquelyn Martin) Unnamed "industry insiders in the health-care sector . . . believe Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could delay a vote on legislation tackling the opioid crisis because passage would give vulnerable red-state Democrats an accomplishment to campaign on back home," The Washington Post  reports . "McConnell's spokesman, Don Stewart, pushed back on the assertion that anyone wants to delay a vote on tackling the opioid crisis until after the election," Colby Itkowitz reports, quoting him: "This is obviously a priority for the leader and he's encouraged his chairmen to come to an agreement quickly and I predict they will." Four Senate committees have reported bills, similar to a  massive package  the House passed in June. The bills are similar: expanding prevention and treatment, and cracking down on distribution. "But the pol...

Courier Journal photo by Beth Warren Thousands of patients with chronic pain in the Louisville area have been displaced by local, state and federal crackdowns on clinics accused of being pill mills, defrauding Medicaid, or both, and it's likely to get worse, Beth Warren reports for the Courier Journal. One of those patients is retiree Michael Anderson, 67, who suffers from occipital neuralgia: electric-shock-like chronic pain in the neck and back of the head. He told Warren that depended on opioids to manage his pain, and his supply was abruptly cut off when investigators raided his pain clinic. "I'm in dire need," he said. Such cases are likely to become more common, Warren writes, because Russell Coleman, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky, says more investigations are underway as part of a national effort. Attorney General Jeff Sessions created a task force in February to target opioid abuse, including over-prescribing of pain and addiction medicine...

A one-year project aims to help 10 rural Kentucky hospitals address substance abuse, with one community outreach event educating health-care providers about the "disease of addiction" and another providing Naloxone training to community members at their local hospital. Both events were part of KORH's Critical Access Substance Abuse Project, which is funded by the federal  Office of Rural Health Policy , according to news releases from the  Kentucky Office of Rural Health . The July 18 CASAP event in West Liberty hosted Dr. John Sanders, the medical director for hospice and palliative medicine at St. Claire HealthCare in Morehead, who told a group of providers about the "disease of addiction," and explained how our understanding of addiction and the treatments for it have evolved, stressing that a purely punitive approach to end addiction simply won't work. He also explained how some physicians have contributed to the problem and discussed the history of 12-s...

HHS Secretary Azar at White House (Photo by Andrew Harrer, Bloomberg) Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday that the Trump administration had learned from the ruling that struck down his approval of work and other "community engagement" requirements for 460,000 Kentuckians on Medicaid, and would keep pushing for such requirements. Azar said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation that the ruling of U.S. District Judge James  Boasberg of Washington was "one blow" to the administration's efforts, but "We�re fully committed to work requirements and community participation in the Medicaid program. � We�ve learned some things from that piece of litigation of which we disagree. But we�re moving forward." The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said recently that it would reopen Kentucky's proposal for public comment, which would give the administration an opportunity to get into the record evidence addressing Boasberg's ...

Huffington Post photo The celebration in recent years about lower smoking rates among teenagers could end up being all for naught, as a new study shows that more people are likely to now start smoking after they turn 18, not before. The study at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, looked at data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health from 2006 to 2013. It found that the start of cigarette smoking among young adults was more than three times higher than that among teens: 6.3 percent and 1.9 percent respectively. �Historically, it used to be that nearly everything started by age 18. That�s no longer the case, as young adults are experimenting with things once more common during high school years. Young adults are starting to act like adolescents,� said Cheryl Perry, senior author of the study, said in the news release . Like the rest of the nation, smoking rates among Kentucky teens have dropped recently, to 14.3 percent in 2017 from 47 percent in 1997. Na...

The award was one of three in the nation. The Northeast Kentucky Area Health Education Center at Morehead won the Center of Excellence Award in Distribution at this month's national AHEC conference for working to improve the health-care workforce in rural and under-served areas. The AHEC was nominated for its Successfully Training and Educating Pre-medical Students program. STEPS was created in 2013 to level the playing field for their local students who are interested in applying to medical school. Most of the 17-county Northeast Kentucky AHEC service region is in Appalachia, which has long been short of physicians. "Studies have shown these physician shortages to be partially attributable to factors including Appalachian students� inadequate academic preparation, limited exposure to health care occupations, low self-confidence, and financial considerations," a news release said. The STEPS program helps the participants prepare for the Medical College Admission Test wit...

Kentucky's Andy Beshear is one of 12 Democratic attorneys general  suing  the federal government over its new rules allowing "association health plans," a product long advocated by Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and recently approved by President Trump. Paul argues that AHPs would make health insurance more affordable and accessible, but the Democrats say the administration's rules allowing them would undermine "essential protections such as coverage of pre-existing conditions, newborn, maturity and pediatric services, substance abuse treatment and oral and vision care," a Beshear press release said. The attorneys general are asking a federal judge to reject a Department of Labor rule  allowing AHPs for  employers, on grounds that it redefines "employer" in a way that conflicts with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, generally known as Obamacare. Beshear said, �If the rule allows spin-off employer association health groups th...

Chart by Chris Ware, Lexington Herald-Leader By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News Kentucky saw an 11.5 percent increase in drug-overdose deaths in 2017, with more than half of the them from fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that can be up to 50 times more potent than heroin. The number of heroin deaths decreased, but overdose deaths from methamphatime surged, according to to the annual  Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy   report . The state recorded 1,565 overdose deaths in 2017, and has toxicology reports for 1,468. Among those, fentanyl was found in 763, or 52 percent, up from 47 percent in 2016. The 2016 report is available  here . "Fentanyl is the deadliest and most addictive drug our nation has ever seen,� Van Ingram, executive director of the ODCP, said in a  news release. �The fact that people continue to use it � despite the obvious risk � shows just how addictive these drugs are. People have become powerless against them. That�s why we have to make every...

By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News Nine counties in Appalachian Kentucky have been recognized as "bright spots" when it comes to health, and seven of them adjoin in Southern Kentucky: Green, Adair, Russell, Wayne, McCreary, Pulaski and Lincoln. The other two counties were Lewis and Morgan. "The Bright Spots project offers hope and a path forward to a healthier Appalachian Kentucky," Ben Chandler, president and CEO of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky , said in a  news release . "Congratulations to the hardworking leaders in the nine Kentucky counties that have formed strong, cross-sector coalitions to address pressing health issues in their communities." The study, which looked for Appalachian counties that had better than expected health outcomes given their resources, analyzed 19 health indicators in each of the 420 Appalachian counties and identified 42 as Bright Spots. The goal of the research was to to identify successful activities, programs...

The 2017 Kentucky Health Issues Poll found that significantly fewer Kentucky adults are getting prescriptions for pain medication; that they strongly support smoke-free schools; and that most would like to see the age to purchase cigarettes raised to the age of 21. But the numbers vary by region. To show regional attitudes about the issues of substance abuse and smoking, which were the main foci of the 2017 poll, the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky has released reports on the findings in regions defined as Eastern, Western and Northern Kentucky, Greater Lexington, and Greater Louisville. The results may help individual communities and the state decide important health policies that affect everyone, whether that be smoke-free workplace laws, smoke-free school policies, substance-abuse treatment and recovery programs, and access to health care. Herald-Leader chart shows results for its areas and the state   The Eastern Kentucky report  says that while the responses from p...

Baptist Health , which got a new CEO in January, is getting a chief operating officer, a new position for Kentucky's largest hospital chain. It announced that the job will be filled Sept. 4 by Brian Falvey, who has been a major executive for "one of the country�s top performing health-care systems." Patrick Falvey Falvey was executive vice president and chief transformation officer for Advocate Aurora Health in Milwaukee, the 10th largest not-for-profit, integrated healthcare system in the country, serving about 3 million patients a year, the Baptist Health news release said. Falvey, who worked at Aurora for 26 years, half his life, will report to CEO Gerard Colman. The release said his "key accomplishments include having the facilities under his leadership achieve top marks in hospital quality and productivity while making improvements to services, and redesigning the clinical research departments." Baptist Health owns eight Kentucky hospitals (in Corbin, La G...

Hospital is at 1530 Lone Oak Rd. (US 45) Paducah's Lourdes Hospital, which has long been part of Mercy Health System of Ohio and Kentucky, is now officially known as Mercy Health - Lourdes Hospital . "As part of Mercy Health, we can leverage the strength of being part of one of the largest not-for-profit Catholic health systems in the country," hospital CEO Michael Yungmann said. "This ministry-wide name change is an important visual sign that all of Mercy Health is coming together as one team to better serve our patients and communities by more closely connecting our points of care across Kentucky and Ohio." The name change comes nearly 30 years after Lourdes joined Mercy Health Systems in 1989," Derek Operle reports for The Paducah Sun . The chain has 23 hospitals and 34,000 employees. The hospital, founded in 1905, was once known as Riverside Hospital. The hospital says it has region's largest multi-specialty physician network, Mercy Medical Associ...

Kentucky�s hepatitis A outbreak is now the biggest outbreak in the United States. As of July 7, the outbreak had struck 65 of Kentucky's 120 counties with 1,094 hepatitis A cases and eight deaths. But federal officials say Louisville is a national example for how to respond to an outbreak, reports Phillip M. Bailey of the  Courier Journal. Epidemiologist Rui Zhao meets with others at Louisville Metro Health and Wellness. (Courier Journal photo by Marty Pearl) As of July 17, Louisville had 540 cases and four deaths. While the liver disease continues to spread around the state, there is evidence that it may be declining. "It feels like we�re coming out of it," Rui Zhao, epidemiologist for the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness told Bailey. "New reports of hep A infections reached as high as 4.1 cases per day in April," Bailey reports . "Since then, that figure has plummeted to about 3.8 in May; 2.5 in June; and 1.67 in July." Offi...

A survey that measured emotional communication among alcoholics found that long after they give up drinking, they still struggle to control their voice pitch and relay subtle emotional cues. Help Guide image The study, published by the  Research Society on Alcoholism , first surveyed 30 people and asked them to say sentences in a certain emotional tone. Of these 30, 15 had been diagnosed with alcohol dependence and had stopped drinking at least a year before the survey. The other 15 were a control group with no alcohol-addiction history. The second part of the study asked listeners to analyze the attempted emotion in the sentences. It found that the persons with alcohol addiction had more trouble expressing vocal emotion. The researchers said in a press release that it is unknown if this is a result of brain damage from excessive drinking that affects motor control and vocal cords, but more research should look into the possibility.