healths

The state has reached an agreement with an independent agency that advocates for people with disabilities that should allow more people with severe mental illness to get out of institutional care an into community housing. The agreement allows the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and Kentucky Protection and Advocacy to address many of the concerns identified in a 2012 P&A report about personal-care homes, which are long-term facilities that provide care for people who don't need full-time nursing care, but need some assistance. The disability advocates have long argued that personal-care homes run counter to the Americans with Disabilities Act and a court decision saying that disabled patients should live in the "most integrated setting." That is defined as one "that enables individuals with disabilities to interact with non-disabled persons to the fullest extent possible," Kentucky Health News reported in 2012. �The latest agreement shows that the...

Image from MGN Online via WKYT-TV A Kentucky doctor convicted of "implanting pacemakers that weren�t medically necessary in order to make money" was sentenced Oct. 30 to three years and six months in prison, fined $50,000 and ordered to repay insurance companies and taxpayer-funded health programs $257,515, Bill Estep reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader . Dr. Anis Chalhoub, 60, is expected to appeal his April conviction  and ask U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove to allow him to remain free while appealing. At sentencing in London, the judge told Chalhoub, �You�ve engaged in conduct that has harmed our community.� Chalhoub was charged with implanted pacemakers into patients who didn�t need them between March 2007 and July 2011. He implanted about 230 pacemakers at the St. Joseph London hospital during that period, U.S. Attorney Robert M. Duncan Jr. said in a news release. The unneeded pacemakers �will adversely impact these patients� lives as they age and m...

Liz Donohoe puffs from a Juul while posing at UK's School of Art & Visual Studies. (Photo by Quinn Foster) The nation's most popular brand of electronic cigarettes is creating addiction on the University of Kentucky campus, Jacob Eads reports for the Kentucky Kernel , the campus newspaper: "If you�ve ever seen a cloud of smoke go up in the middle of a lecture, you�re probably familiar with the Juul . The popular brand of discreet and sleek e-cigarettes has become a habit in the hands of thousands of college students across the country, and UK students have bought into the trend. But in the haste of keeping up with the Juul�s rise to stardom, did anyone bother to read the box?" E-cigs "are marketed as a nicotine alternative for adults who are trying to quit smoking, but some public health professionals are waging a war" against them, "in an attempt to study potentially adverse health effects they might have," Eads reports. "Some say it�s ...

Kentucky Educational Television   will broadcst a six-part series called "You Are Not Alone," aimed at raising awareness of the issues regarding the mental health of Kentucky youth. Topics will include depression, anxiety, stigma, suicide prevention, trauma, toxic stress, parental concerns and challenges, the role of schools, youth advocacy and promising strategies. The six 30-minute programs, hosted by Renee Shaw, will air back-to-back on three consecutive Mondays in November. The first two, "Youth Speak Out" and "Help for Families and Caregivers" will air Nov. 5; "Whole Child, Whole School" and "Depression and Anxiety" will air Nov. 12; and "Trauma and Toxic Stress" and "Suicide Prevention/ Teaching Hope" will air Nov. 19.  All will begin at 9 p.m. ET.

One day each year, many newspapers go pink -- with pink ink or pink paper -- to increase awareness of breast cancer and support research to find a cure. This year, the Lexington Herald-Leader led its front page with a very personal a gripping story by staff writer Cheryl Truman about her breast cancer diagnosis, surgery and chemotherapy, and her struggle to get her life back and deal with troubling parts of the health-care system. The story is 1,928 words, and the most important may be at the end: "Sometimes I will stop a moment and touch a flower, look for an extra few seconds at the farm view from my deck, brag about how the kids turned out. I am here to do that, and it has made all the difference," Truman writes . "Part of it is medicine, part luck. The first part was scheduling the mammogram."

By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News The federal-state Medicaid program provides health coverage to about 1.4 million Kentuckians, or about one in three. The exact number fluctuates, because Medicaid and other social programs have a substantial "churn," people coming onto the program as others come off. WKYT-TV image If work requirements are approved for Kentucky Medicaid, the number of people "churning off" of the program in the state would double over a two-year period, going from an estimated 108,000 adults to 216,000,  estimates   The Commonwealth Fund , a New York-based foundation that supports independent research on health policy reform. The report says it "should be of concern to policymakers" because research shows that people with gaps in health insurance coverage "report problems getting health care or paying medical bills at rates nearly as high" as those who go without insurance at all. To predict how work requirements would affec...

This editorial appeared in  The Kentucky Standard , Bardstown, on Oct. 25. Nelson County should take pride in its syringe exchange. That might sound strange, at first. After all, a community sets up an exchange when it has a problem with substance abuse. But the truth of the matter is that Kentucky has a substance abuse problem throughout the state. It can be hard for an idyllic historical town such as Bardstown or as bucolic a county as Nelson to admit that such a modern problem as intravenous drug abuse is just under the surface. But that is just what Nelson County did when it authorized the needle exchange with the Lincoln Trail Health Department , the only one in the eight-county region. Photo illustration by The Kentucky Enquirer Staff from the health department and the exchange visited Nelson County Fiscal Court recently to provide an update following its first annual report. One number on that report had caught some attention � the return rate of syringes, which was only 36...

Madison County health officials have declared a local outbreak of hepatitis A and called on all local residents to get vaccinated for the liver disease that lives on poor hygiene. "There are now 24 hepatitis A cases in Madison County related to the statewide outbreak that produced more than 2,050 across Kentucky," reports Mike Stunson of the Lexington Herald-Leader , citing the county health department. "It reported 13 cases on Oct. 6." The department recommended hepatitis A vaccinations for all residents. In Whitley County, where 99 cases have been reported, "Pharmacies are struggling to keep up with the demand for vaccines," reports Phil Pendleton of Lexington's WKYT and Hazard's WYMT . "Rick Loudermelt at Whitley Pharmacy in Williamsburg says they have given out numerous vaccines since May of this year," Pendleton reports. "He says it's been hard to keep up with the demand, administering between 15 and 20 a week." Mad...

The  U.S. Department of Justice is forming a strike force to fight opioid abuse in Appalachia. "Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski says the Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force will investigate health-care fraud schemes and prosecute medical professionals and others involved in the illegal distribution of opioids," The Associated Press reports . The department said the strike force will include extra prosecutors, the FBI , the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General. Benczkowski said suffering caused by opioid abuse is "particularly staggering" in Appalachia. He says the problem is "more reprehensible when unscrupulous physicians and pharmacies" contribute to the epidemic by illegally supplying prescription painkillers.

Chart shows average premiums for most popular stand-alone Medicare prescription drug plans. Seniors could save millions of dollars by shopping around for Medicare drug plans, but few do, Trudy Lieberman writes for Rural Health News Service : "With drug costs climbing for seniors, careful shopping is important this open-enrollment season," which for Medicare runs through Dec. 7. �It�s not easy to compare options, but differences do matter,� Tricia Neuman, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation , told Lieberman. And it can matter to a lot more people than it did before. "More than one million beneficiaries with drug benefits had spending above the threshold in 2015, more than twice the number in 2007," Lieberman reports. Still, few "shop and compare Part D plans, even though this year the average Medicare beneficiary has a choice of 27 stand-alone Part D plans," for people in traditional Medicare, and 24 Medicare Advantage plans that include ...

Chart from Insider Louisville The average premium for the most popular health insurance policy on the federal exchange, called the "silver plan," will drop by 1.5 percent next year -- but not in Kentucky, where the rate for that same plan will increase by 9 percent. A Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services news release notes that 2019 will be the first year the national average has dropped since full implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2014. This year the average premium for these benchmark "Obamacare" plans increased by an average of 37 percent, and by 25 percent the prior year. Nationally, CMS says a 27-year-old, single non-smoker who gets insurance through the exchange, HealthCare.gov , will pay an average annual premium of $4,872, down from $4,944. In Kentucky, that  will rise to $4,524, from $4,152. Healthcare.gov customers in 17 of the 39 states will see declines, three will see no change and customers in Kentucky and 19 o...

By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News The warning from the administration of Republican Gov. Matt Bevin that some Medicaid benefits may need to be cut because of a budget shortfall over the next two fiscal years has caused unnecessary alarm, a research and policy analyst for the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy , said at the Kentucky Voices for Health annual meeting in Lexington Oct. 19. Analysts Jason Dunn and Dustin Pugel gave an update on health policy at the Kentucky Voices for Health meeting. Dustin Pugel referred to a presentation  the  Cabinet for Health and Family Services  made in August to the legislature's Budget Review Subcommittee on Human Resources, predicting that over the next two fiscal years the state will be $300 million short in what it needs to pay for Medicaid. "There's some problems with their math," Pugel said. He said the cabinet based its estimate on its initial forecast of expenses, though there is almost always a gap between what an a...

By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News The University of Kentucky has received a five year, $15 million grant along with a $50 million donation in drugs, to treat hepatitis C in Hazard and Perry County in order to examine the concept of "treatment as prevention." Hepatitis C is a contagious liver disease caused by a virus that is primarily spread by injection drug users when they share needles or other equipment. Left untreated, it can lead to cirrhosis or liver cancer. Jennifer Havens The Kentucky Viral Hepatitis Treatment Project, led by Jennifer Havens at the UK Center on Drug and Alcohol Research , will provide treatment to 900 Perry County drug users who have hepatitis C. They have already been identified through Havens' previous work in the county around drug addiction. Havens told the UK Board of Trustees, at a day-long meeting devoted to the issues of opioid abuse, that it's important to treat people who test positive for hepatitis C in drug-using networks as...

By Al Cross Kentucky Health News A Kentucky doctor with expertise in the field is objecting to the Food and Drug Administration 's plan to approve for sale a painkiller stronger than fentanyl, an opioid that is deadly even in very small doses. Dr. Raeford Brown Dr. Raeford Brown, a professor of anesthesiology and pediatrics at the University of Kentucky , is the longtime chair of the FDA�s Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee. The panel voted 10-3 on Oct. 12 to support approval of a form of sufentanil branded as Dsuvia. Brown said he was unable to attend that meeting, but sent the panel a statement saying why sufentanil "represents a danger to the general public health and will make our job of protecting Americans more difficult." He explained the reasons for his opinion: "Once the FDA approves an opioid compound, there are no safeguards as to the population that will be exposed, the post-marketing analysis of prescribing behavior, or the ongoing...

"For those approaching Medicare or already covered by it, now is a critical time of year to review health benefits," Sally Squires writes for  The Washington Post . "Several changes are coming in 2019, including to Medicare Part D drug coverage insurance and to some Medicare Advantage plans, which are offered by private insurance companies and are known as Medicare Part C." So, it seems "more important than ever for Medicare recipients � and anyone approaching age 65 � to begin looking at all the details right now, during Medicare�s open enrollment period, which began Oct. 15 and ends Dec. 7," Squires  writes . "This is the prime time of year when changes can be made in a plan without penalty. There are a lot of different plans that can work better or worse depending on your health status and finances. Experts say you should choose a plan that will not just take care of your health needs today but also what they could be in 10 years." One such e...

The parent firm of most Catholic-owned hospitals in Kentucky, Catholic Health Initiatives , has received conditional approval from church officials to merge with Dignity Health , a not-for-profit chain based in San Francisco. The deal "would create the nation's largest not-for-profit hospital company by revenue,"  Harris Meyer  and  Tara Bannow  report for  Modern Healthcare . CHI's Kentucky facilities, operating under the name KentuckyOne Health , include Louisville's  Jewish Hospital  and its affiliates ;  St. Joseph Hospital  in Lexington, London, Martin, Mount Sterling and Nicholasville;  Flaget Memorial Hospital  in Bardstown,  Our Lady of Peace  in Louisville; and  Sts. Mary and Elizabeth Hospital  in Louisville. After the church's Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith deferred to local bishops, Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila told CHI "that as long as his five moral conditions for the deal continue to be ...

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The Rural and Underserved Health Research Center is holding a free half-day symposium to discuss research in a wide range of topics, including: rural opioid misuse and suicide, pneumonia-vaccine disparities, the impact of rural hospital closures on emergency services, and health-care utilization among coal miners with black lung and other respiratory diseases. The symposium will be held at the University of Kentucky Gatton Student Center, Senate Chamber A268, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Nov. 12. The event is free, but registration is required before Nov. 5. Click here to register. Click here to see the full agenda. The RUHRC is a grant-funded program that focuses its research on access to healthcare and substance abuse treatment in underserved rural areas of the United States, including Appalachia. The research is meant to better inform health policy makers "with the ultimate goal of reducing inequities in care and improving population health in rural communities," says its we...

The 20th annual conference of the Kentucky Rural Health Association will be held in Bowling Green Nov. 15-16 at Western Kentucky University 's Knicely Conference Center, 2355 Nashville Rd. Through Thursday, Nov. 1, the registration fee is $125 for KRHA members and $175 for non-members. After Nov. 1, the fees are $175 and $225, respectively. Student rates are $45 and $55, respectively. For detailed registration information, click here . For a copy the agenda and other information, click here .

Amid growing concerns that electronic cigarettes will undermine the progress made in reducing tobacco-related disease in Kentucky, the Coalition for a Smoke-Free Tomorrow will host a half-day conference Dec. 10 in Louisville to explore the latest evidence about the health effects of e-cigarettes. Getty Images The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky and Kentucky Youth Advocates will also release a new focus group report that day about Kentucky youth attitudes and perceptions about e-cigs. "E-cigarette use among youth is at now at epidemic levels, escalating dramatically since the introduction of flavored pod e-cigarettes such as Juul and copycat products," Ben Chandler, chair of the coalition and CEO of the foundation, said in a news release. "Kentucky lawmakers and health advocates need to know what the research says about these products, and how they're impacting future tobacco use and health. We'll also examine the policies that should be enacted to turn back th...

By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News The 2018-19 flu season has barely started, but Kentucky has already reported its first flu-related death -- in Lexington, according to the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department . The flu killed 325 people in Kentucky in the last flu season. Flu is a very contagious disease caused by the influenza virus that spreads from person to person. Symptoms include fever, headache, cough, sore throat, runny nose, sneezing and body aches. An antiviral drug can shorten the course of the illness or reduce its severity if given within two days of a person getting the flu, but there is no real treatment for the disease, and that's why health officials encourage everyone six months and older to get a flu shot. "There's no treatment for the flu," Dr. Ryan Stanton, a Lexington emergency-room physician, told WKYT-TV . "Our only fight against this is prevention." KHN Editor Al Cross's bandage after his flu shot. (Photo by Patti C...

An analysis of medical records from 2006 to 2015 found that doctors didn't record a diagnosis for opioid prescriptions almost one-third of the time. "The findings help support criticism by the  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , the  Food and Drug Administration  and others that say inappropriate prescribing practices have helped drive the opioid crisis," Maggie Fox  reports  for  NBC News . Nearly 50,000 Americans died from opioids in 2017, 1,565 of them in Kentucky. CDC photo The analysis, published  in the Annals of Internal Medicine , used data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, an annual survey of doctor-office visits. Because providers can enter up to three diagnosis codes per visit, the researchers limited their sample to visits with two or fewer codes to remove this as a possible reason for not listing pain as a diagnosis. The study found that opioids were prescribed in nearly 32,000 visits, for cancer-related pain 5 pe...

The University of Louisville has been awarded $16.4 million to study how the environment impacts diabetes and obesity, U of L announced . "Officials said research will be conducted on how air pollution could be connected to diabetes, and whether the dietary supplement carnosine can protect people from air pollution,"  reports  Lisa Gillespie of  WFPL . Aruni Bhatnagar, director of the U of L Diabetes and Obesity Center , told Gillespie that the funding will also be used to explore diabetes and obesity as it relates to cardiovascular issues. �Diabetes and obesity are the leading cause of public health problems within the country as well as within the state,� Bhatnagar told Gillespie. �Heart disease is one of the main consequences of diabetes and obesity. In fact, people who have diabetes, about 70 percent of them die from heart disease.� The National Institutes of Health  grant will also fund research around the effects of pollution on stem cell health; how exercise ...

The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky is offering a free webinar about how state laws prevent local governments from passing tobacco-control ordinances and other health policies in Kentucky. The laws "pre-empt" local regulations on distribution, sale and regulation of tobacco products, so if a city or county in Kentucky wants to pass an ordinance to raise the legal age to purchase tobacco products, or ban tobacco flavors in electronic cigarettes that appeal to youth, they can't. Presenters in the webinar will share their experiences with teh issue and discuss advocacy strategies for countering and repealing pre-emption laws. They include Tonya Chang, vice president for advocacy with the American Heart Association Great Rivers Affiliate; Ellen J. Hahn, professor, University of Kentucky Colleges of Nursing and Public Health; Traci Kennedy, consultant to Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights ; and Mark Pertschuk, director of Grassroots Change: Connecting for Better Health ....

By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News In a world inundated with interpersonal conflicts, a Kentucky psychiatrist has written a groundbreaking new book that explains what lies at the root of these conflicts and offers a way to resolve them. "It's a book that talks about why the things that go wrong in our relationships go wrong, and why we live on automatic pilot and do things that we sometimes don't even want to do, but we repeat them over and over again and we wish we could stop," Dr. Christine B.L. Adams, one of the book's authors, said in a telephone interview. The book, Living on Automatic: How Emotional Conditioning Shapes Our Lives and Relationship s, is a collaborative effort between Adams, a child psychiatrist in Louisville, and the late Dr. Homer B. Martin, her colleague and mentor. Adams said their landmark research around emotional conditioning is based on 80 combined years of psychotherapy with thousands of patients. The authors write that people ar...

By Trudy Lieberman , Rural Health News Service Making decisions about Medicare coverage has never been easy. Over the years the task has become more complicated as Congress has moved to privatize the system. Open enrollment, the time for evaluating your coverage and making changes if you can, opens Oct. 15 and runs through Dec. 7 this year. This is the first of two columns that address decisions people about to become eligible for Medicare and those already on the program will have to make. While some 57 million people are still in traditional Medicare, which remains a social insurance program, the number of beneficiaries in privatized Medicare known as Medicare Advantage has grown steadily. Today one-third of all beneficiaries have joined private plans, many of them responding to sales pitches - sometimes questionable ones - from insurance companies that now regard their Medicare Advantage business as a major profit center. With a Medicare Advantage plan, generous payments from the f...

By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News Several speakers at the Oct. 4 Health Watch USA Healthcare Transparency and Patient Safety Conference in Lexington talked about the importance of adequate staffing in nursing homes and hospitals to maintain and improve safety for patients and staff. Sherry Culp of the nonprofit Nursing Home Ombudsman Agency of the Bluegrass said that while regulations issued in 2016 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have offered some positive changes, such as requirements for improved training and "appropriate competencies and skills," and better provisions for planning of care, it didn't do enough with staffing. "The final rule really fell short on nursing staffing standards," she said. "We wanted there to be registered nurses in the building 24 hours a day. . . . We know that an RN level of nursing is the level that has the competence to deal with some of the significant changes in conditions that occur in this vul...