PeoriaStory

Interesting news at OSF St. Francis

PEORIA -- Dr John Carroll has an interesting post on his blog concerning OSF St. Francis Medical Center, Peoria's largest hospital and a powerful player in local politics. 

It seems Carroll's old foe, Dr. George Hevesy, has been voted out as chairman of the hospital's Emergency Department, though he is still director .  That's a distinction I don't quite understand, but the medical/industrial bureaucracy is a world unto itself. 

Carroll blames Hevesy for promoting AMT, Peoria's ambulance service run by the three hospitals, at the expense of the firefighters who have the same or better training as AMT's staff, thus providing second-rate service to accident victims in some instances.

Hevesy was part of the bureaucracy that fired Carroll from the emergency department years ago, to get rid of his effective charity Haitian Hearts. It was competing with funds that St. Francis wanted for its own projects.

Carroll also was outspoken about problems in the ED but the hospital didn't want to hear it.  Carroll was proved to be right, but big hospitals don't want any criticism from their staff. (After all, it's just human lives versus money.)

Carroll, a brilliant physician and speaker of unquestioned integrity, still runs Haitian Hearts.  He says Hevesy is on AMT's payroll, as well as the hospital's. Anyway Hevesy apparently has lost one of his titles.  Not sure about the paycheck.

 -- Elaine Hopkins

Peoria healthy: survey

PEORIA -- Forget the recent gang riots, uh, make that 'youth events'.  Here's some good news for a change: 

Peoria Among Top 10 Cities for Healthy Living

 

Peoria, IL (July 7, 2011)—The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index® (WBI) ranks Peoria 13^th best city in the country for total well-being and health of its residents.  The WBI rankings are based on data gathered between January and December 2010 regarding resident’s life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behavior, work environment and basic access to healthcare.  

Communities receive a well-being composite score based on life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behavior, work environment and basic access to healthcare. 

Peoria was ranked 13^th in the nation and 10^th among midsized cities. 

The state of Illinois was ranked 26.  (Not so good....)

Here's the website for the full report.

 

911 Alert

PEORIA HEIGHTS -- If you are involved in an accident or a health emergency, your chances of survival just went up if you live in Peoria Heights.

Dr. John Carroll tells all on his blog: http://pmmdaily.blogspot.com/2009/10/peoria-heights-firefighters-gain.html

(Link button isn't working on Typepad's new software. Let's hope it's fixed soon.)

-- Elaine Hopkins

Poison honey? Read this!

PEORIA -- The Seattle newspaper contains a shocking story about adulterated honey imported into the US and sold to unsuspecting consumers!

This honey, mostly coming from China, contains pesticides and other compounds banned in the US, and may be watered down with other ingredients.

The article has complete details about how this occurs. The only omission: which brands to avoid.

Lax US regulation is to blame for this situation. It's an outrage, and another reason to buy food locally, from people who stand behind their products.

-- Elaine Hopkins

Stroke symptoms: valuable information

PEORIA -- Here are three fast ways to determine whether someone is having a stroke:

* S -- Ask the individual to SMILE
* T -- Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK (coherently) A SIMPLE SENTENCE (E.g. "It is sunny out today.")
* R -- Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS

If he or she has trouble with any one of these tasks, call 911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

And to remember these three questions, try very hard to remember the letters STR, and remember that they stand for Smile, Talk, Raise. Maybe remember them as the first three letters of the word “stroke.”

Stroke kills and disables thousands of people yearly. Given the current political and economic situations, stroke may strike even more.

And many people HATE to go to a hospital needlessly. The cost, the hassle, the threat of infection, all deter hospital visits, even for the insured.

But a stroke can kill or disable. Here's the complete story from AlterNet.

-- Elaine Hopkins

Health news

PEORIA -- Here are some health tidbits that you may not see in the mainstream press, but which are interesting and important.

NATIONAL HEALTH. A survey by researchers said to represent the views of 800,000 US doctors found a majority -- 59 percent -- supporting national health insurance, according to Reuters news service. Fewer than one third -- 32 percent -- oppose it.

In 2002, the figures were 49 percent in favor and 40 percent opposed.

The study was done by the Indiana University School of Medicine, who surveyed doctors directly.

The Reuters story stated:

The United States has no single organized health care system. Instead it relies on a patchwork of insurance provided by the federal and state governments to the elderly, poor, disabled and to some children, along with private insurance and employer-sponsored plans.

Many other countries have national plans, including Britain, France and Canada, and several studies have shown the United States spends more per capita on health care, without achieving better results for patients.

An estimated 47 million people have no insurance coverage at all, meaning they must pay out of their pockets for health care or skip it.

Candidates in the race for president have talked about the issue but no one is advocating a national plan like those in other major nations.

PILL FOR MEN. A new contraceptive pill for men, said to be 98 percent effective, is now possible.

This new pill would consist of a chemical compound of a sugar molecule that disables the sperm. It's been tested in rats and in a Petri dish, according to a researcher at the NSU Center for Biotechnology and Biomedical Sciences.

Meanwhile, a hormone-based male contraceptive, available in the form of a daily pill or a monthly injection, is already available in many countries worldwide.

But would it be compatible with Viagra and other such products? The story doesn't say.

Taking the stairs

PEORIA -- Taking the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator carries significant health and other benefits.

But how do you convince people to use the stairs?

British researchers have found that messages such as “7 Minutes of Stair Climbing Daily Protects Your Heart” increased staircase use by 190 percent and boosted climbing on a nearby staircase with no messages by 52 percent.

Regular stair-climbing burns calories.

A 175-pound man walking up a normal flight of home stairs eight times a day could burn off the equivalent of four days’ worth of food every year, researchers have found.

The study, which appears in the September/October issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion, included nearly 82,000 pedestrians observed over six weeks in a shopping mall in England.

The researchers printed the messages on one of two staircases separated by plants and a pair of escalators.

At first, they decorated the target staircase with a colorful design, which did little to attract climbers. After adding the message, however, the researchers saw a significant shift in shopper traffic on the target stairs.

Then they wondered if stair climbing would continue when the signs were not visible. It did. They found a 25-percent increase in shoppers traveling down the targeted staircase.

Other benefits from stair use include saving the electricity needed to operate the elevator and the security of knowing that if the power goes off, you won't be stuck in an elevator for perhaps hours.

-- Elaine Hopkins

Average hospitals

PEORIA -- Forget all the lavish advertising and public relations promoting Peoria's hospitals. They're all average, according to the latest information from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The government has released information on how US hospitals handle that most common and dreaded event -- heart attacks. More specifically it looks at the death rates from heart failure and heart attack after the victim turns to the hospital.

The information is listed on the HHS's clunky website where you can check out the various measures for treating a heart attack as well as death rates from heart attack and heart failure.

Best bet to navigate the site: type in your city for a list of hospitals within say 50 miles, to get the exact names of the hospitals you want. (For example, OSF Saint Francis Medical Center is not listed that way. Instead it's Saint Francis Medical Center.)

The site covers 188 Illinois hospitals under the category 'heart failure.' It looks at the 30-day survival rate, and finds one -- Bromenn in Bloomington -- as one of only 35 in the US that ranks below average. The rest in the Peoria area are average.

A Bromenn official told the Chicago Tribune he was "perplexed" by the results, since the hospital has above average care on other heart measures. It rated average on the 30-day survival rate for heart attack, as did the other hospitals.

Two Chicago hospitals, Northwestern Memorial and Loyola University Medical Center, Maywood, were the only Illinois hospitals rated above average for heart failure survival

The Tribune's in-depth article reveals that only a few percentage points separate the above average from the below average.

True to form, the HHS site does not reveal exact figures, and lumps the hospitals only in the three categories, above, below and average.

A patient contemplating heart surgery or treatment who has a choice of hospitals might well ask for those exact figures, however, and wonder about a hospital that won't reveal them.

It also pays to remember that medical figures like these rely on complex statistics -- which in turn usually rely on the famous 'bell curve' that controls statistical results. If you're at an end of that curve, the usual treatment may not work for you or may produce better than average results.

--Elaine Hopkins

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