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Sunday, 21 June 2015

Princess Health and 2015 Waterloo Classic.Princessiccia

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This is our 4th consecutive year doing the Waterloo Classic.  It has been a staple for the team since our inception, and has always been a great way to start summer off on the right track.  We were excited to try a new course on the West end of Waterloo this year, and it did not disappoint.  Here is how the team did:

5K

Dave Rutherford, just 1 day removed from his 1:22 half marathon PB, was in first for the team with a
great time of 18:31, placing 2nd in his AG and 7th OA.

Steph Hortian came in 2nd OA and 1st in her AG.

Aidan Rutherford ran an outstanding PB of 19:19, good enough for 10th OA and 4th in his AG!

Mike Piazza showed that his fitness is coming along nicely with a solid 19:43, placing him 2nd in his AG.

Coming off a stress fracture, Gillian decided last minute to follow Sean and surprise him with a sprint finish at the line, finishing in 20:07, placing 4th OA and 2nd in her AG.

Coach Sean ran 20:08, placing 3rd in his AG, and emotionally crushed from Gill's ruthless sprint. 

Dan Nakluski ran 23:35, good enough for 3rd in his AG!

Derek Hergott ran a very solid 25:05 WHILE pushing Miles in a stroller!

Samara ran a great time of 36:22, placing 7th in her AG.

Olivia came in just behind 38:36, placing 8th in her AG!

10K

Johana made an outstanding return to the team running a very solid sub-34, winning the race OA.

RunnerRob was in next for the team with an outstanding time on a hot day of 34:32, placing 2nd
OA.

Chris Goldsworthy had, quite honestly, the most ridiculous come from behind finish ever, barely taking 3rd place OA at the line, completing the podium sweep for H+P!

Nick was in next for the team in 39 minutes, placing 3rd OA and well inside the top 10.

Andrea Sweny was our first female to finish, running an excellent new PB of 42:22, placing 2nd OA and winning her AG!

Eric came in right after Andrea with a great time just over 43 minutes, placing 2nd in his AG.

Don MacLeod was in right after Eric with an outstanding new personal best of 43:10, bringing him in 3rd in his AG.

Emily was in next for the team with a very solid 10K of 43:52, placing 1st in her AG and 4th OA!

Paul pushed a solid pace on a training day, running just under 46 minutes and placing 4th in his AG.

Howie was in next for the team with a time of 48:51, just under a minute ahead of his rival Manny!  The epic HowieVsManny battle will continue at the ENDURrun in August!

Kristin Marks, Kim Chan and Tracey Kuchma were in next for the team all with times very close to 53 minutes.  Kristin placed 3rd in her AG, Kim got 4th, and Tracey got 2nd!  Nice work girls!

Juan had a solid 10K of 56 minutes placing just within the top 10 of his AG.

Heidi was in next for the team with a very solid time well under 59 minutes.  This allowed her to comfortably win her AG!


Up next for the team is the H+P SummerTT and the ENDURrun!

#cantwontstop 

Princess Health and Kentucky is cracking down on Suboxone, a heroin substitute that has become a big part of the illegal trade in painkillers.Princessiccia

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A drug that was supposed to help people get off heroin has "created a new cash-for-pills market and a street trade" that state officials are trying to stop, Mary Meehan reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The drug is buprenorphine, the active ingredient in the brand-name drugs Suboxone and Subutex, which became more popular in 2012, when the state cracked down on "pill mills" that were freely handing out prescriptions for painkillers. "A lot of the pill mills morphed into facilities that dispense these prescriptions," Dr. John Langefeld, medical director for the state's Medicaid program, told Meehan.

Also, Meehan writes, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act required insurance plans to cover treatment for substance abuse, and "as more Medicaid patients and others got health-insurance coverage, more people obtained prescriptions for buprenorphine, Langefeld said. . . . According to a state report, one user obtained prescriptions from nine doctors."
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/06/20/3910362_the-drug-that-was-supposed-to.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/06/20/3910362_the-drug-that-was-supposed-to.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Lexington Herald-Leader chart by Chris Ware from state data
Use of the drug in Kentucky "has increased 241 percent since 2012," Meehan reports. "And 80 percent of the prescriptions for it were being written by 20 percent of the state's 470 certified prescribers, said Dr. Allen Brenzel, medical director of the state's Department of Behavioral Health. . . . Since 2011, 10 doctors have been sanctioned by the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure because of problems prescribing Suboxone."

Suboxone is supposed to be taken in conjunction with therapy and drug testing. "a patient receives a controlled dose of a legal drug as the dose is tapered by a physician for a safe and effective withdrawal," Meehan notes. However, "doctors started to see Suboxone patients on a cash basis, asking for as much as $300 for an office visit that included a prescription for the maximum allowable amount of Suboxone. Patients often received no therapy or drug testing. Some patients were on the maximum dose indefinitely, Brenzel said." Some doctors prescribed the drug with other painkillers, creating an illegal market.

To prevent such abuse by unscrupulous doctors, the medical-licensure board has issued regulations that require "more physician education and the requirement that the drug be prescribed only for medically supervised withdrawal and not be given to pregnant women," Meehan writes. "Patients should also be closely monitored and drug tested. If those rules are not followed, a doctor can face sanctions or restrictions to his medical license."

Suboxone was in the national news recently because the accused killer in the Charleston, S.C., shootings was arrested for illegal possession of it four months ago at a South Carolina shopping mall, the Herald-Leader notes.
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/06/20/3910362_the-drug-that-was-supposed-to.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/06/20/3910362_the-drug-that-was-supposed-to.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Saturday, 20 June 2015

Princess Health and Lake Cumberland District Health Department using polls in an effort to get school boards to make campuses tobacco-free.Princessiccia

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Countywide smoking bans are unlikely to pass anytime soon in most of rural Kentucky, but more county school districts are making their campuses tobacco-free. Now a multi-county health department is trying to get rural school boards to do that, with public-opinion polls showing that county residents overwhelmingly favor the move.

Department logo has been altered to
show Clinton County in yellow.
The Lake Cumberland District Health Department conducted the poll in Clinton County, and said it found that 86.55 percent were in favor and 7.16 percent were opposed. The rest had no opinion.

Making a campus tobacco-free means that members of the public are not free to smoke at school athletic events, so the poll also asked, �Would you like to see our school become tobacco-free at all events?� The results were virtually the same: 85.3 percent answered yes and 8.7 percent answered no, even though one-fourth to one-fifth of the county's residents smoke and it has a long history of raising tobacco.

"The results are perhaps surprising to some, considering the rate of tobacco usage in the county," reports the Clinton County News. The poll of 749 residents has an error margin of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

The department also surveyed 100 teachers in the school system and found that 77 percent would "definitely" support making the schools 100 percent tobacco-free.

The health department presented the survey and other findings to the Clinton County Board of Education June 15, but the board took no action. The department noted that a recent survey found that 28 percent of the county's students in eighth through 12th grades had used smokeless tobacco in the previous 30 days. "That level was the highest in the Lake Cumberland District," the Clinton County News reports.

The Casey County Board of Education adopted a smoke-free policy after a poll by the health department showed 70 percent of the county's residents favored it, the Casey County News reported.
Princess Health and Merger mania: Aetna bids for Humana; Cigna may want it too; Anthem has bid for Cigna; UnitedHealth makes a play for Aetna.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Merger mania: Aetna bids for Humana; Cigna may want it too; Anthem has bid for Cigna; UnitedHealth makes a play for Aetna.Princessiccia

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Aetna Inc. has made a bid to buy Louisville-based Humana Inc.,"one of a number of recent moves by big health insurers to find merger partners," Dana Mattioli and Liz Hoffman report for The Wall Street Journal.

The proposal was made in "the last few days," the Journal reports. "It isn�t clear how much Aetna indicated it would pay. Humana has a market value of $30 billion. The company hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to help it field takeover interest, people familiar with the matter have said."

Meanwhile, Aetna has been approached by another big insurer, UnitedHealth Group. "It isn�t clear what, if any, Aetna�s response was," the Journal reports. "News of the Aetna proposal comes the same day Anthem Inc., another of the five big managed-care companies, said it boosted its takeover offer for Cigna Corp.,"offering $47.5 billion. "Anthem went public with the bid after the two sides failed to reach agreement, and is seeking to put pressure on Cigna through Cigna shareholders."

"Cigna itself is eyeing Humana, people familiar with the matter have said. The five big managed-care companies are jockeying for deals that will enable them to get more efficient and better respond to changes in the health care landscape in the U.S.," the Journal reports.

"Humana, which has an estimated 12,000 employees and roughly 2,000 contractors in Louisville and the immediate region, has been seen as an attractive target in the health-insurance industry because of its well-run business running Medicare Advantage programs," Grace Schneider reports for The Courier-Journal. The company is valued at $30 billion.

"The company's membership rolls have surged to more than 3 million in the last year," Schneider writes. "That growth comes when health care reform has forced providers � hospitals, doctors, pharmacies, among them � to consolidate to increase their leverage and clout in an increasingly competitive health care segment. For the same reason, health insurers are now looking to consolidate."
Princess Health and Biotech firm buys UK professor's anti-overdose nasal spray.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Biotech firm buys UK professor's anti-overdose nasal spray.Princessiccia

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Pharmacy Professor Daniel Wermeling at the University of Kentucky invented a nasal spray to fight heroin overdoses, and a biotech firm has bought the product, which may be on the market within six months, pending approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The device "contains a single dose of a mist form of naloxone and delivers the drug in a way similar to how Flonase is used to treat allergies," Mary Meehan reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The product is on a fast track for approval because of the rising rates of heroin overdoses across the country, said UK Provost Tim Tracy, former dean of UK's pharmacy school. Wermeling doesn't know exactly when his product will be on the market, but he said the FDA approved another fast-track, anti-overdose therapy after only 14 weeks. The fast-track program speeds development of drugs to treat serious or life-threatening conditions. "Last year, 233 people [in Kentucky] died with heroin in their systems, according to the state medical examiner's office," Meehan notes.

Wermeling has been developing the project at UK since 2009 with the help of more than $5 million in federal and state tax dollars. Tracy said Indivior PLC, the spinoff pharmaceutical company that bought the nasal spray, will be able to manufacture, market and distribute the product. Right now, emergency responders and hospitals must draw naloxone, branded as Narcan, in a syringe to provide the correct dose.

Princess Health and Three doctors, nine others in western half of Kentucky are indicted in the largest-ever federal 'takedown' of Medicaid fraud.Princessiccia

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Former Dr. Fred Gott of Bowling Green was arrested.
(Photo: Miranda Pederson, Bowling Green Daily News)
Twelve people in the western half of Kentucky, including three doctors, have been charged with Medicaid fraud in what the federal government calls its biggest-ever "takedown" of the problem, Andrew Wolfson of The Courier-Journal reports.

The indictments allege "a half-dozen schemes involving nearly $8 million in alleged fraudulent billings," Wolfson writes. "The offenses include $5 million in false billings for muscle-relaxant injections that were never delivered to patients, as well as a staged car wreck in which three people allegedly conspired to get controlled substances and fraudulent reimbursements."

In another case, Wolfson reports, "a medical practice that treated car wreck patients is accused of using the DEA numbers of nurse practitioners to order hydrocodone for herself and falsely billing it to an insurance company. Nationally, the sweep resulted in charges against 243 people, including 46 doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals."

John Kuhn, acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Kentucky, told Wolfson that about $1 billion of annual Medicare and Medicaid expenses are fraudulent. Medicare is the federal health-insurance program for people over 65; Medicaid is the federal-state program for the poor and disabled.

Former Dr. Fred Gott of Bowling Green, a 63-year-old cardiologist, was charged with "conspiracy to dispense controlled substances, health care fraud and money laundering," Deborah Highland reports for the Bowling Green Daily News. "The Bowling Green-Warren County Drug Task Force opened an investigation into Gott�s practices after Warren County Coroner Kevin Kirby alerted the task force about drug overdose deaths involving Gott�s patients, task force director Tommy Loving said."

Friday, 19 June 2015

Princess Health and Trimble County parents protest 'humiliating' treatment of students whose school lunchroom accounts are in the red.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Trimble County parents protest 'humiliating' treatment of students whose school lunchroom accounts are in the red.Princessiccia

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Parents in Trimble County are demanding that the county schools stop serving cheese sandwiches to students whose lunchroom accounts are in the red, Kayla Vanover of WAVE-TV in Louisville reports.

"Embarrassing, humiliating and 'flat out wrong' is how parents described the school's policy to take a student's lunch right off the lunch table and toss it because the child's parents had not replenished their account to cover the meal," Vanover reports.

On May 20, Lori Ritchie's daughter "sat down to eat, but her hot meal was thrown away and she was given a cheese sandwich with a side," Vanover reports. "Ritchie said she doesn't blame the workers, but she said the policy needed to be changed a long time ago. Wednesday, a special called public meeting with the school board allowed other parents and community members to voice their opinions on the current policy, in hopes an agreement could be made."

Doug Joyce, grandfather of a student, told the board, "It is bullying. We throw kids out of school or reprimand them for bulling, so why should we let grown-ups bully kids like that?" A board member, unidentified in Vanover's story, said "We don't want any child to be embarrassed or receive an alternative meal, so we are really going to beef up the communication."
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