Princess Health and Princess Health andStudy finds that obese workers cost employers thousands in extra medical costs every year; Kentucky ranks ninth in obesity.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andStudy finds that obese workers cost employers thousands in extra medical costs every year; Kentucky ranks ninth in obesity.Princessiccia

employers obesity research workplace health

Gusty 13:14 Add Comment

A morbidly obese employee costs his or her employer approximately $4,000 more in health care and related costs every year than an employee of normal weight, according to a study in the American Journal of Health Promotion. Kentucky ranks ninth in obesity among the states.

As might be expected, the study also found that obese workers with high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol brought more costs than obese workers without those conditions. "Someone who is overweight or obese and also has diabetes is more likely to file a short-term disability claim compared to someone who doesn't have diabetes but is overweight or obese," said Karen Van Nuys, Ph.D., lead co-author of the study and economist at Precision Health Economics in Los Angeles.

The study showed that an employee with a body mass index of 35 has almost twice the risk of filing a short-term disability claim or workers' compensation claim than an employee with a BMI of 25. A BMI of 30 or more indicates obesity. While employees who are of average weight incur approximately $3,830 each year in medical claims, sick days, short-term disability and workers compensation, and morbidly obese employees incur about $8,067 every year.

The researchers analyzed three years of data from almost 30,000 workers, including "self-reported employee health information, medical visits and prescription claim and employer-reported data on absenteeism, short term disability and workers compensation claims."

"Overweight/obesity are just one of several modifiable risk factors in the workplace�but ones that are most problematic right now because they're getting worse by the minute," said Ron Goetzel, Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Truven Health Analytics. 

Van Nuys and Goetzel said their report is not meant to encourage employers to discriminate against overweight people, but Goetzel said employers should "invest in robust, comprehensive health promotion programs for their employees that include physical activity, healthy eating, stress and depression management and control of blood pressure and diabetes." He added, "If you do those in combination and you do them right, not only is [this type of intervention] cost-effective, in some cases it is cost-beneficial, so that there is potentially even a return on investment here for employers." (Read more)

Princess Health and Princess Health andMore treatment needed to deal with painkiller abuse, expert witness tells Senate caucus; McConnell says jail helps, too.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andMore treatment needed to deal with painkiller abuse, expert witness tells Senate caucus; McConnell says jail helps, too.Princessiccia

pain pain clinics pill mills prescription drug abuse prescription drugs

Gusty 13:00 Add Comment

Addiction to prescription painkillers, and increased addiction to heroin by people originally hooked on prescription medicine, is "a public health disaster of catastrophic proportions" that "was caused by the medical community," the chief medical officer of a New York drug-treatment program said at a U.S. Senate hearing Wednesday.

"The medical community, including dentists, must prescribe more cautiously," Dr. Andrew Kolodny of Phoenix House told the U.S. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control. In areas where abuse is rampant, "Treatment capacity does not come close to meeting demand," he said. "If we don't rapidly expand access to treatment, the outlook is grim." He also called for better education of physicians about the risks of prescribing painkillers.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky attended the first several minutes of the hearing and read a statement calling for the problem to be attacked by a combination of treatment and incarceration, with the use of multi-agency partnerships. He also said, "It's clear that the increase in heroin addiction is tied to our fight against prescription drug abuse."

Part of that fight included requiring Kentucky doctors to participate in the state's prescription-drug monitoring program, which Kolodny said made the state one of only three with such a requirement. The others are New York and Tennessee.

Officials have said that when Kentucky cracked down on disreputable "pill mill" pain clinics, making prescriptions harder to get, addicts turned to heroin. "Heroin is just a symbol for the prescription-drug problem," Joseph Rannazzisi, deputy assistant administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, told the senators.

Rannazzisi said the largely successful effort against pill mills in Florida has driven them to Georgia and Tennessee. He said Tennessee has 300 pain clinics. "They're moving north and west," he said. "Regulatory boards in the states need to take control."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the Democratic co-chair of the caucus, said the testimony made prescription-painkiller and heroin abuse seem worse than the drug problems she dealt with as mayor of San Francisco in the 1980s. "Nothing like today," she said. "I am really struck."

Princess Health and Princess Health andNorton Healthcare chief, Hardin judge-executive, former Lincoln coroner receive awards from Kentucky Hospital Association.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andNorton Healthcare chief, Hardin judge-executive, former Lincoln coroner receive awards from Kentucky Hospital Association.Princessiccia

awards Kentucky Hospital Association

Gusty 10:00 Add Comment

The Kentucky Hospital Association gave some awards during its annual convention in Lexington on May 9, according to a KHA press release. Stephen A. Williams, chief executive officer of Norton Healthcare in Louisville, received KHA's highest honor, the Distinguished Service Award. Recipients of this award must have not only provided extraordinary service to the association but also shown exceptional leadership in the health-care field.

Hardin County Judge-Executive Harry Berry, board chair of Hardin Memorial Health in Elizabethtown, and Bill Demrow, Stanford funeral director and former Lincoln County coroner who is vice board chair of Ephraim McDowell Health in Danville, received the Health Care Governance Leadership Award. It is bestowed upon people "who have had a positive and sustainable impact on the quality of care in their community," according to the release.

Princess Health and Princess Health andCarlisle hospital closes, making Nicholas County the 40th Kentucky county without a hospital.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andCarlisle hospital closes, making Nicholas County the 40th Kentucky county without a hospital.Princessiccia

health reform hospitals jobs rural-urban disparities

Gusty 13:04 Add Comment

Fully one-third of Kentucky's counties will not have a hospital, following the closure of Nicholas County Hospital in Carlisle. That will make Nicholas the 40th county without a hospital, according to the Kentucky Hospital Association.

The hospital board said it searched "every possible option to keep the hospital open," but it has filed for bankruptcy and will close later this week, reports WLEX-TV. Officials reported that the 14-bed hospital was losing more than $100,000 per month, which they say resulted from a decrease in the number of patients and slow state and federal reimbursements, Sam Smith reports for WKYT-TV.

"It's a trickle-down effect that's going to impact the entire community and then there's the more critical life-saving aspect. There's a number of people within the community who are alive today because they were able to receive treatment at the hospital," hospital spokesman Stephen Scalf told WKYT.

Scalf said the hospital's clinics will close by Friday except for one rural health clinic that will likely remain open. Johnson Mathers Nursing Home, which operates on the same campus as the hospital, will not close. "Nicholas County Hospital is operated by a private nonprofit organization, JMHC Inc., and has 44 full-time and 40 part-time employees who are being laid off," Karla Ward reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The hospital's board said in a news release that it has been negatively affected by a national transition to "larger, urban-centered hospitals' that had forced many other rural health centers to close."

The fiscal court will be looking for options to create an "urgent treatment or ambulatory care facility that will provide for the community's medical needs in the future," WLEX reports. The county owns the hospital's property, and Judge-Executive Mike Pryor said other healthcare provers are considering taking over the space, Smith reports. "It's just another hit to us," said Pryor. "It's going to be something we are going to have to deal with, like we have in the past."

Princess Health and Princess Health andPoll finds contrasting views of Obamacare and Kynect.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andPoll finds contrasting views of Obamacare and Kynect.Princessiccia

Affordable Care Act health reform insurance exchange obamacare Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act poll state government

Gusty 20:19 Add Comment

Most registered voters in Kentucky have an unfavorable view of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act when it is called Obamacare, but a plurality think favorably of Kynect, the brand name of the health-insurance marketplace that state government created under the law.

Those were among the findings of a poll taken April 30 through May 6 for NBC News by the Marist College Institute of Public Opinion in New York. It asked, "Overall, do you have a favorable or unfavorable impression of Obamacare?" The result was 33 percent favorable and 57 percent unfavorable, which was very close to voters' opinion of President Obama: 32 percent approval and 56 percent disapproval.

Last fall, the Kentucky Health Issues Poll found that people who weren't sure how Obamacare would affect them and their families had an unfavorable opinion of it, while those who said they did know how it would affect them had a favorable opinion.

In the recent poll, half the people were asked about Obamcare and the other half were asked, "Overall, do you have a favorable or unfavorable impression of Kynect?" The term was not defined. The poll found that 29 percent had a favorable opinion and 22 percent had an unfavorable opinion, while 29 percent said they had never heard of Kynect and 21 percent said they were unsure how to rate it.

Among people who identified themselves as Democrats, 39 percent were favorable and 15 percent were unfavorable; among Republicans, it was 16 percent favorable and 32 percent unfavorable. Among independents (who were 14 percent of the survey), opinion was 31 percent favorable and 22 percent unfavorable.

The only polling region where Kynect was not rated favorably was the Bluegrass and some surrounding counties, where opinion was 25 percent favorable and 28 percent unfavorable.

The poll asked all registered voters, "From what you have heard about the new health care law, do you think it is a good idea, a bad idea?" Then they were asked if they felt that strongly or not so strongly. The results showed polarization: 27 percent strongly felt it is a good idea, 43 percent said they felt strongly that it was a bad idea, and those who said their opinions weren't so strong were in the single digits. Eleven percent said they didn't have an opinion either way, and 4 percent said they weren't sure.

The poll, taken via landline and cell phones, has an error margin of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points. The Obamacare and Kynect questions have an error margin of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. NBC News and Marist College took the survey mainly to gauge opinions in Kentucky's race for the U.S. Senate. For its release and the poll results, click here.

Princess Health and Princess Health andSchools keep adjusting to national nutrition guidelines.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andSchools keep adjusting to national nutrition guidelines.Princessiccia

child obesity nutrition poverty school lunch schools

Gusty 19:47 Add Comment

Paducah-area school districts "continue to adjust school meals to ensure students are fed complete, healthy meals every day," Kathleen Fox reports for The Paducah Sun.

The revised National School Lunch Program "places the emphasis on portion size and healthier food options such as fruits, vegetables and milk," Fox notes. "The requirements to make lunches and breakfasts healthier, which have been phased in over the last two school years, will continue to change for the 2014 school year. All pastas and other grain products in schools will have to be whole-grain rich, defined as 51 percent or more of whole grain, and the first ingredient has to be whole wheat or grain."

Half the grain products in Paducah Public Schools are whole grain, and some are white to head off complaints, Nutrition Director Penny Holt told Fox. Holt "doesn't foresee major issues in switching the remain half to whole grain," Fox writes. "She said many of the whole grain products are popular with students including brown rolls, flatbreads, short slice Domino's pizza crust and honey wheat whole grain wraps."

"The healthier options are growing in popularity, especially with our younger kids who have become more familiar with them," Holt said. All children in the school system receive free breakfast and lunch as part of a special federal program for schools with a large percentage of children in poverty.

"Holt said the greater challenge will be adhering to the stricter sodium guidelines with meals and higher nutritional value for snacks or a-la-carte items," Fox reports. "Items that can be served other than those on the daily menu include baked chips and whole grain cookies, but nothing with minimal nutritional value such as soda or candy."

In the McCracken County Schools, Food Services Director Sara Jane Hedges "said the district already has success with many of its whole grain alternatives, including its pastas and pizza crusts," Fox writes. "She said the change toward healthier a-la-carte options, which now have to provide additional nutritional value, will not be a problem because the district has already worked toward offering foods that meet those guidelines." (Read more; subscription required)

Princess Health and Princess Health andStudy finds ADHD treatment might discourage smoking; Kentucky ranks high in both.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andStudy finds ADHD treatment might discourage smoking; Kentucky ranks high in both.Princessiccia

ADHD research smoking tobacco youth

Gusty 14:03 Add Comment

Stimulant medications used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder might also reduce smoking risk, particularly if the medication is taken regularly, according to an analysis performed by Duke University. The study, online in the journal Pediatrics, has special signifcance for Kentucky, which first among the states in smoking and percentage of young people diagnosed with ADHD.

"Given that individuals with ADHD are more likely to smoke, our study supports the use of stimulant treatment to reduce the likelihood of smoking in youth with ADHD," said senior author Scott Kollins, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke.

ADHD, which causes hyperactivity, impulsivity and difficulty paying attention, is often treated with stimulant medication, behavior therapy or both. The smoking rates are much higher for people who have ADHD than for the rest of the population. "Studies have shown that youth with ADHD are two to three times mores likely to smoke cigarettes than their peers, and 40 percent of adults with ADHD smoke regularly, more than twice the rate" among adults without the disorder, a Duke release says.

Some studies regarding potential connections between the using stimulant medications and smoking showed that taking stimulant medications increases smoking, and others didn't reveal any effects. "It has been suggested that some people with ADHD 'self-medicate' their attention deficits using nicotine," said lead author Erin Schoenfelder, a Duke psychologist. "Our findings show that treating ADHD effectively with medication may prevent young people from picking up the habit."

So far, the Duke study is the largest meta-analysis about the effects of stimulant medications on smoking habits. It looked at 14 longitudinal studies about smoking and ADHD treatment. The study found a "significant association between stimulant treatment and lower smoking rates. The effect was larger in those with more severe ADHD and when participants took stimulant medications continuously," the release says. The researchers said more studies are required to figure out the nature of the stimulant treatment needed to assist in reducing smoking risk.

"This study may debunk the perception that stimulants will increase one's risk for smoking," Kollins said. Schoenfelder said, "My hope is that this research can help inform our efforts to prevent negative outcomes for kids with ADHD, including cigarette smoking. This population hasn't been targeted for smoking prevention efforts, despite the well-known connection between ADHD and smoking." (Read more)