Death of personal-care home resident has lawmakers from his hometown talking about stricter staffing rules

The death of a missing personal-care home resident has a bipartisan pair of Kentucky lawmakers from his home town of talking about setting staffng standards for Kentucky's personal-care homes or even nursing homes, which have successfully lobbied against such regulation.

Republican Sen. Jimmy Higdon and Democratic Rep. Terry Mills of Lebanon participated in the search that led to the discovery of Falmouth Nursing Home resident Larry Lee's body, Valarie Honeycutt Spears of the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. Following the search, they agreed tougher legislation is needed for personal-care homes.

State regulations on staffing for such homes are vague, stating staff-to-resident ratios should be based on the number of patients and the supervision required to meet their needs, Spears reports.

Higdon plans to address staff-to-resident ratios, resident activities, aging facilities and other problems through legislation. He said he may also support legislation that would create procedures for communities to follow when vulnerable community members go missing.

Mills wants the General Assembly to investigate staff-to-resident ratios for all long-term care facilities, including nursing homes. He said he and Higdon have discussed a "call for a task force to study conditions at personal-care homes." (Read more)

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3 universites and federal agency join to improve oral health in Appalachian Kentucky

With money from the Appalachian Regional Commission and some of their own, three very different Kentucky universities will collaborate "to enhance sustainable, collaborative dental health education and care" in the state's eastern coalfield, where both are sorely lacking, they announced in a press release.

Morehead State University, the private University of Pikeville, and the University of Kentucky's College of Dentistry will design the Appalachian Rural Dental Educational Partnership Plan "to train more dentists to practice in rural areas and give them the tools necessary to set up thriving dental practices in Eastern Kentucky," the release said. The funding is $400,000 from ARC, $127,293 from UK, $82,035 from UPike and $47,873 from Morehead State.

“The majority of Eastern Kentuckians have struggled to sustain quality dental health, and one of the barriers to maintaining good dental health is poor access of quality dental care,” state Department for Local Government Commissioner Tony Wilder said. His agency handles ARC matters in Kentucky.

Said new UK President Eli Capilouto, a dentist by trade, “We know that if we can break a cycle of poor health, we can begin to break cycles of poverty. Cycles of despair can become legacies of hope. We also, increasingly, know that partnerships and greater collaboration are the best – and, perhaps, only – way to address major challenges.” He called the project a unique partnership among a federal agency, a governor and “the state’s flagship institution, Kentucky’s public institution dedicated to serving the people of Eastern Kentucky, and a critically important college with deep roots in Eastern Kentucky.” (Read more)

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Hyperinsulinemia: Cause or Effect of Obesity?

Is Elevated Insulin the Cause or Effect of Obesity?

The carbohydrate hypothesis, in its most popular current incarnation, states that elevated insulin acts on fat cells to cause fat storage, leading to obesity.  This is due to its ability to increase the activity of lipoprotein lipase and decrease the activity of hormone-sensitive lipase, thus creating a net flux of fat into fat cells.  I'm still not sure why this would be the case, considering that fat tissue becomes more insulin resistant as body fat accumulates, therefore insulin action on it is not necessarily increased.  Total fat release from fat tissue increases with total fat mass (1), demonstrating that insulin is not able to do its job of suppressing fat release as effectively in people who carry excess fat.  But let's put that problem aside for the moment and keep trucking.

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UK Hospital gets below average marks on patient satisfaction, infections; data on your local hospital are available online

Despite $900 million being invested in expanding the University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital, its patients at do not seem all that happy with the care they receive there.

In an op-ed piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Dr. Kevin Kavanagh of Somerset highlights the results of a survey on patients' hospital experiences. That survey ranked UK's hospital below state and national averages in nine of 10 measures. "Especially disturbing, only 66 percent said they would definitely recommend the institution, and only 56 percent stated their room and bathroom were 'always clean'," writes Kavanagh, chairman of Health Watch USA.

The UK hospital also did not fare well when it came to its assessment by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on hospital-acquired conditions. "UK had the highest reported rate of deadly vascular catheter infections in the state," Kavanagh writes. "UK also had an unacceptably high rate of falls and deep bed ulcers. These latter conditions should be zero."

Kavanagh concluded, "If there are quality problems at UK, it is of paramount importance that they are corrected since not only current patients are at risk but also the quality of the training experience of our future clinicians, which can affect care for years to come." (Read more)

Newspapers can access information about their area hospitals by clicking here. Viewers can choose up to three hospitals and see how they compare to one another in categories like: how well nurses communicate with patients; how quiet the areas around patients are; if patients would recommend the hospital; and if patients always received help as soon as it was wanted.

Newspapers can also see the results of the CMS assessment on hospital-acquired conditions for their area hospitals by clicking here and downloading the Hospital-Acquired Condition Rates zip file (scroll down to Kentucky hospitals). The file contains data on eight hospital-acquired conditions reported between Oct. 1, 2008 and June 30, 2010. Among the conditions reported are air embolism; blood incompatibility; catheter-associated infections; falls and trauma; foreign objects left in the body after surgery; pressure ulcers; uncontrolled blood sugar levels; and urinary tract infections.

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Seven UK docs-to-be off to Morehead to train in rural medicine

Learning how to practice in rural areas is the goal of seven University of Kentucky medical students, who are off to Rural Physician Leadership Program in Morehead. (From left: Shea Poynter, Lesley Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Nathan Hudson, Katrina Winkler, Crystal Norgren and Miranda Smith)

The program "trains physicians to become practitioners and leaders for rural areas," Julie Meador writes for UKNow, the university's news service. "It was created in response to the growing health care needs evident in rural areas of Kentucky and the rest of the nation."

The training is primarily done at St. Claire Regional Medical Center and with physicians with the Northeast Area Health Education Center, who are serving as preceptors. The students will also take courses at Morehead State University's Department of Business and Public Affairs on the medical use of information technology, financial issues and debt management and community engagement for health policy.

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Combating childhood obesity reinvigorates Barren County Chamber of Commerce health committee

Combating childhood obesity has become the focus of the health-care committee of the Glasgow-Barren County Chamber of Commerce, a panel that had otherwise lost its drive.

The committee has started using the "We Can" childhood obesity prevention program, which has already been adopted by more than 1,000 communities nationwide. Designed for children 8 to 13, the program "offers a curriculum that can be used to teach parents about healthy eating," reports Gina Kinslow of the Glasgow Daily Times. The committee has now partnered with various organizations, including the Boys and Girls Club of Glasgow-Barren County, to get the word out and start educating parents.

"The 'We Can' education program provides parents and caregivers with tools, fun activities and more to help them encourage healthy eating, increased physical activity and reduced time sitting in from of the screen (TV or computer) in their entire family," said Kelly Lile Jenkins, director of the Boys and Girls Club. Nearly 1 in 6 American children between the ages of 2 and 19 are obese, an estimated to 12 million youth. Another 14.8 percent are overweight, committee chair Beverly Mortimer noted. (Read more)

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Markey Cancer Center at UK says its patients have higher survival rates than those treated elsewhere in Ky. and the nation

"Patients at the University of Kentucky's Markey Cancer Center who have certain types of cancer have higher rates of survival than patients with the same cancers treated elsewhere in the state or even the nation according to new data released today," Business Lexington reports.

"Markey officials said the data shows that the center's patients have significantly better five-year survival rates than those Kentucky cancer patients who were treated elsewhere for brain, breast, liver, lung, ovarian, pancreatic and prostate cancer, as well as for stage IV colorectal cancer." (Read more)

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