Princess Health and Princess Health andPrescribing antibiotics for viral infections must stop; overuse of antibiotics causes antibiotic-resistant 'superbugs'.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andPrescribing antibiotics for viral infections must stop; overuse of antibiotics causes antibiotic-resistant 'superbugs'.Princessiccia

antibiotics Centers for Disease Control hospital-acquired infections

Gusty 17:57 Add Comment

Bronchitis is a viral infection, and antibiotics are not effective for treating viral infections.

Doctors know this, yet they continue to prescribe antibiotics to patients with bronchitis and other viral infections anyway, Ezra Klein reports on his new website, Vox.

Research shows that doctors prescribe antibiotics for acute bronchitis about 71 percent of the time even though they know that overuse of antibiotics is the leading cause of "superbugs," or organisms that are resistant to some if not all antibiotics, Klein reports. They do this because it makes patients feel better to walk out of the doctor's office with a treatment.

Klein goes on to paint a picture of a post-antibiotic future that could result from doctors prescribing antibiotics for viral infections. Klein reports that  patients must stop thinking that good physician care is the result of being treated with an antibiotic, especially in the treatment of bronchitis.

Kentucky and its Southern neighbors overuse more than their share of antibiotics.  The southeastern states are the highest users of antibiotics, with twice as many antibiotic prescriptions as states in the Pacific region, according to a study by the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, part of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CDC recommends that every hospital in this country have an antibiotic stewardship program and track their resistance and prescribing patterns. Half of all hospital patients get antibiotics and one-third of the antibiotics prescribed are inappropriate or are unnecessary, CDC Director Tom Frieden told Klein.

Frieden said the world is at risk of losing antibiotics to resistance created by over-prescribing, but a "modest investment" can thwart the most dangerous drug-resistant organisms. Working toward creating new antibiotics and then not falling into the same patterns of abuse must also be part of the solution, Frieden said. (Read more)

Princess Health and Food Reward Friday. Princessiccia

Princess Health and Food Reward Friday. Princessiccia

Gusty 08:38 Add Comment

This week's lucky "winner"... Lay's milk chocolate-dipped potato chips!!

Read more �

Princess Health and Princess Health andLouisville ranks next to last in fitness among 50 largest metros.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andLouisville ranks next to last in fitness among 50 largest metros.Princessiccia

fitness health rankings rankings

Gusty 08:00 Add Comment

The Louisville metropolitan area ranks 49th for fitness among the nation's 50 largest metro areas in the newly released 2014 American Fitness Index, reports Laura Ungar of The Courier-Journal. The ranking is published by the American College of Sports Medicine and is based on 31 indicators of chronic health problems, health behaviors, recreational facilities and physical or built environments.

The Memphis metropolitan area was the only one ranked lower than Louisville. The Louisville metro area includes Jefferson County and eight surrounding counties in Kentucky and four in Indiana.

"There surely is a lot of room for improvement," Dr. Jonathan Becker, a sports medicine specialist at University of Louisville Family Medicine and KentuckyOne Health, told Ungar. "We need to be moving more, eating less and smoking less."

The Washington, D.C., area claimed the top spot as the nation's fittest, rising above Minneapolis-St. Paul, the winner for the last three years.

The negative scores on the index just kept adding up for Louisville, falling way below the targeted fitness index in areas such as smoking, federal aerobic-activity guidelines and the amount of fruits and vegetables consumed per day, Ungar reports. Louisville also had higher levels of disease than the targeted goals for asthma, diabetes and obesity.

"I'm not surprised, based on what I've seen," Patrice Fife, a certified fitness instructor for the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health & Wellness, told Ungar. She said diabetes in the region is "rampant." Overeating is a real problem, and people need to learn more about proper nutrition and portion control, she said: "They need to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables."

City officials and fitness advocates pointed to Louisville's efforts to improve the region's fitness, including programs that bring fresh fruits and vegetables into "food deserts," a ban on smoking ban in public places and expanded smoking-cessation classes. Louisville has also unveiled a plan to curb trans fats in local foods, expand outdoor smoke-free areas and prohibit idling vehicles when air quality is poor, among other things, Ungar notes.

Steve Tarver, chief executive officer of the YMCA of Greater Louisville, told Ungar, "It has taken decades for the Louisville region to become so unhealthy, and it will take a long-term commitment to get healthier. He said it will involve complex issues such as reducing racial and economic health inequities." (Read more)

Princess Health and Princess Health andObamacare navigator program in Georgia, overseen by former UK Extension official, is ended by state legislature.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andObamacare navigator program in Georgia, overseen by former UK Extension official, is ended by state legislature.Princessiccia

Extension Service health insurance insurance exchange Medicaid Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act state governments

Gusty 11:36 Add Comment

By Melissa Landon
Kentucky Health News

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has signed into law two bills aimed at thwarting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. One will prevent the College of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Georgia from continuing its navigator program to help Georgians get Obamacare coverage once the federal grant of $1.7 million runs out in August.

Deborah Murray

The navigator program sought to educate people about the law, to help them sign up for Medicaid or for coverage on the federal exchange. "People who had never had insurance and hadn't had insurance in a long time got affordable, high-quality insurance," Deborah Murray, the college's associate dean for Extension and outreach, told Kentucky Health News. "People were so appreciative and relieved to know they could now afford health care."

Before going to Georgia, Murray was director of the Health Education in Extension Leadership program in the University of Kentucky's College of Agriculture, which oversees the Cooperative Extension Service in the state. She said only a few other navigator programs are based at universities.

Murray said she knew Obamacare wasn't popular in Georgia, but she still didn't expect the kind of opposition that arose in the legislature. "The role of the university is to educate," she said. "What we were doing is really education focused: giving people the information they needed to make informed decisions."

After the grant runs out, Murray said the Extension Service will continue its mission to educate and inform. "Educating the public about health-insurance literacy is part of the Extension and land-grant mission of the university, and we will continue to do that," she said. "Helping people understand health insurance and use it properly will help reduce health care costs." Like Kentucky, Georgia has a network of county extension offices, which they will use to continue informing people about important ideas like preventative care, co-insurance and deductibles, Murray said.

The Georgia legislation also transfers Medicaid expansion authority from the governor's office to lawmakers and bans the creation of a state health insurance exchange like Kentucky's. Although Georgia did not expand Medicaid eligibility to people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, as Kentucky did, poor people who qualified for it and PeachCare, a state program, could still sign up. "Georgia cannot afford for our Medicaid rolls to swell. Otherwise, we start cutting into the education budget, the transportation budget and the public safety budget," Rep. Jason Spencer, sponsor of HB 943, told Georgia Health News.

Princess Health and Princess Health andCan e-cigarettes help you quit smoking? That's unproven.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andCan e-cigarettes help you quit smoking? That's unproven.Princessiccia

e-cigarettes smoking smoking cessation

Gusty 09:51 Add Comment

The notion that electronic cigarettes can help smokers cut back or quit smoking is uproven, says an article in the June issue of Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, the scientific journal of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. The article contradicts British research suggesting that e-cigarettes could play a positive role in reducing smoking rates for people who try to quit smoking without the aid of prescription medication or professional support.

Photo from U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Manufactures of e-cigarettes say that progressively adding smaller doses of nicotine to the e-cigarette will help smokers quit smoking. But the authors say this theory hasn't been proven and no evidence supports the claims. "Despite the apparent optimism surrounding e-cigarettes and their purported therapeutic role in smoking cessation, there just simply is not enough evidence to suggest that consumers should use e-cigarettes for this purpose," lead author Andrew Nickels says.

Nickels examined the risks of e-cigarettes, including the ongoing dependence on nicotine and dual use of e-cigarettes and regular cigarettes. Dual use is common, with people using e-cigarettes in public and smoking regular cigarettes at home. The researchers found that this behavior continues to expose children and asthma sufferers in the household to secondhand smoke. "It also promotes ongoing nicotine dependence,� says co-author Chitra Dinakar.

Nicotine is an addictive neurotoxin, and the increased use of e-cigarettes has caused an increase in calls to poison centers. The most common adverse health effects from e-cigarettes are nausea and eye irritation, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. More than half the calls involved children under 5.

Because e-cigarettes are fairly new, the article says there could be other long-term health complications that have yet to be discovered. Results of long-term exposure to such substances are unknown.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proposed a rule that will allow it to regulate e-cigarettes. In April, Gov. Steve Beshear signed into law Senate Bill 109, which prohibits the sale of e-cigarettes to minors in Kentucky.

Princess Health and Princess Health andNew rule allows Medicare to drop doctors for irresponsible prescribing.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andNew rule allows Medicare to drop doctors for irresponsible prescribing.Princessiccia

doctor shopping doctors Medicare physicians pill mills prescription drug abuse prescription drugs

Gusty 17:28 Add Comment

Medicare physicians who prescribe drugs in abusive ways can now be expelled by the federal government, Charles Ornstein reports for ProPublica.

This increased oversight of Medicare Part D prescribers could help decrease the availability of prescription drugs to abusers in Kentucky. More than 1,000 Kentuckians die each year from prescription drug overdoses, and the state has the third-highest overdose death rate in the nation.

Opoids, which are often found in pain medicine, are the most commonly abused prescription drugs, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Hydrocodone, an opoid, is the most commonly prescribed controlled substance in Kentucky, according to the Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting (KASPER) system, and is also the most prescribed drug in Part D program, according to ProPublica's Prescriber Checkup, a tool that compares physicians' prescribing patterns among specialties and states.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed the new rule after ProPublica documented "how Medicare's failure to oversee Part D effectively had enabled doctors to prescribe inappropriate or risky medications, had led to the waste of billions of dollars on needlessly expensive drugs and had exposed the program to rampant fraud," Ornstein writes.

Part D covers 37.5 million seniors and disabled patients, and one in every four prescriptions in the U.S. is paid for by Medicare, costing taxpayers $62 billion in 2012, and experts have complained that Medicare is more interested in providing drugs to patients than in targeting problem prescribers, Ornstein notes. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general has called for tighter controls.

The new rule allows Medicare to drop doctors "if it finds their prescribing abusive, a threat to public safety or in violation of Medicare rules," or if their Drug Enforcement Administration registration certificates are suspended or revoked, Ornstein writes. Problem providers will be identified by prescribing data, disciplinary actions, malpractice lawsuits and other information.

Opponents of the rule have called its definition of "abusive" prescribing too vague. Some worry that patients will lose access to necessary medication if their doctor is removed from the program, Ornstein writes. Medicare officials said they intend to expel providers only in "very limited and exceptional circumstances," saying "It will become clear to honest and legitimate prescribers . . . that our focus is restricted to cases of improper prescribing that are so egregious that the physician or practitioner's removal from the Medicare program is needed to protect Medicare beneficiaries."

The new rule also allows the Medicare center to "compel health care providers to enroll in Medicare to order medications for patients covered by its drug program, known as Part D," Ornstein writes. Now, doctors not enrolled in Medicare can prescribe for Part D patients; they will have to enroll or opt out of the program by June 1, 2015.

The doctors most affected by this will be dentists and Department of Veterans Affairs physicians who provide services not covered by Medicare but have patients who fill prescriptions covered by the program, Ornstein notes. Most health providers are already enrolled. (Read more)

Princess Health and Princess Health andAshland hospital agrees to pay $40.9 million to settle charges it defrauded Medicare and Medicaid for six years.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andAshland hospital agrees to pay $40.9 million to settle charges it defrauded Medicare and Medicaid for six years.Princessiccia

Gusty 13:44 Add Comment

"King's Daughters Medical Center in Ashland has agreed to pay $40.9 million to settle allegations that it fraudulently billed federally-funded health care programs for hundreds of unnecessary heart procedures" from 2006 through 2011, Bill Estep reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. "The payment is thought to be the largest ever involving suspected health care fraud in the federal court's Eastern District of Kentucky, which covers 67 counties in the eastern half of the state."

The hospital did not admit wrongdoing, but "agreed to internal reforms and to increased monitoring of its claims to federal health-care programs for five years," Estep reports. "Officials at the hospital, which employs 3,500 people, made the 'difficult decision' to settle the investigation rather than spend money defending allegations related to 'old cases,' the hospital said in a statement. The hospital said that it has received top rankings for its cardiac care from independent panels. Prosecutors contended that in order to pump up its bottom line, the hospital billed for stent operations and diagnostic catheterizations performed on patients who didn't need them. . . . Doctors also allegedly falsified records to justify payments."

U.S. Attorney Kerry Harvey said the hospital's $40.9 million payment is about double what it gained from improper billing. "Federal law allows for triple damages in cases involving alleged false claims to government programs," Estep notes. Perrye K. Turner, special agent in charge of the FBI in Kentucky, said "The level of funds involved in this matter is staggering. This money has been stolen from the patients and taxpayers."

"The government also argued that King's Daughters had improper relationships with five doctors," Estep reports. "The hospital made unreasonably high payments to the five, and they in turn referred patients to the hospital, prosecutors alleged. . . . The allegations outlined in the settlement are similar to claims in pending state-court lawsuits that doctors at King's Daughters misrepresented the severity of patients' heart conditions in order to justify heart procedures on more than 500 patients."

Estep notes that the settlement "was the third large agreement finalized this year" after Harvey pledged to ramp up efforts against fraud: "Harvey said there are a number of other federal health care fraud investigations underway in Kentucky.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/05/28/3262903/ashland-hospital-agrees-to-pay.html#storylink=cpy(Read more)