News


Week of June 9 - In Case You Missed It...TOMF Medical News Roundup

June 13, 2014


In Case You Missed It...
June 9, 2014

Buzzword Gets Wall Street Journal Look

Patient engagement, the new byword to save our health system billions by getting patients to follow treatment plans and take their meds, got a close look in today's Wall Street Journal.

In a special section (Journal Report/Unleashing Innovation) the Journal looks at tools to help patients want to be involved in their own health, learn more about conditions, and take action to better outcomes. If you are unaware of this buzzword, the section serves as a decent introduction to the concept -- and the patient barriers that stop full potential.

TMC Nurse Wins Award

Congratulations Stephanie Miller RN, who works in orthopedics at Tucson Medical Center, for winning the Mountain West Rising Star Award.

The annual award is given to a nurse with less than five years of professional experience. Winners demonstrate strong nursing knowledge and clinical leadership and exceed role expectations in patient care and professional endeavors.

Details are at nurse.com.

Arizona Weed News

Saturday the Arizona Daily Star ran a Capitol Media Services story by Howard Fischer in which we learned an administrative law judge called illegal the Arizona Department of Health Services denial of adding PTSD to the list of conditions for which citizens could receive an Arizona Medical Marijuana Card. The judge said anecdotal evidence should have been considered. ADHS stuck with the scientific literature. ADHS can disregard the administrative law judge opinion, but the case can be appealed to Superior court.

Today's Star said marijuana dispensaries welcome the idea of having ADHS "secret shoppers" come in an ask about edible marijuana. This might be illegal under Arizona law, but so were edibles until a superior court ruling late last year.

In Case You Missed It...
June 10, 2014

Welcome Dr. Kraft

After nearly a year since Dr. David S. Alberts retired as director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, the center has hired a permanent director. Andrew S. Kraft MD was announced by UA press release, cancer center blog and in today's Arizona Daily Star.

The Cancer Center was founded 38 years ago by Dr. Sydney Salmon and has had Salmon, Alberts and Anne E. Cress MD as directors. Dr. Kraft hails from South Carolina and now faces his first Tucson summer.
TOMF welcomes him to Tucson.

Flu Shot Story

Summer may not be the time when you think about flu vaccines, but rest assured drug companies are developing influenza vaccines as you read this to fight next winter's flu strains.

Last year the flu hit young healthy people hardest. Last Sunday's Star (H1N1 Survivor: Skipping Flu Shot Wasn't Worth Risk) told the story of a 39 year old Tucsonan who barely survived -- and would not have without the use of the ECMO (external lung) machine and an extended hospital stay. She woke after nine days, unsure where she was.

If you think the flu shot isn't for you, take a gander at the story on "azstarnet" before you definitively decide against vaccination.

In Case You Missed It...
June 11, 2014

June Nat Geo Packed with Medical Interest

Now National Geographic can be picked up on newsstands, it is worth snagging a copy of the June 2014 edition-- if you have interest in medicine. One of the feature articles covers a Russian medical train that serves the forgotten populations of Siberia and forces you to realize just how vast the country is.

There is a spread about food-borne diseases that sicken one in six Americans every year. The stunner: 80% of the pathogens that make us sick (and kill 3,000 of us annually) are unknown.

Among the reader submitted photos in the "Your Shot" department is an evocative portrait of an elderly Lebanese women. Turns out she is a patient in a Beirut waiting room. Her doctor, returning from lunch, snapped the picture with his smartphone. That doctor is Tarek Touma D.O. Because Osteopathic Medicine is such an American invention, we tend to forget it has spread around the world. Today, 65 countries have unlimited practice rights for osteopathic physicians.

Do You Know POLST?

You have a living will. Hopefully you have designated a medical power of attorney. Do you have POLST?

New studies in bioethics and hospice journals are finding that patient wishes regarding end of life are better met with POLST, physician ordered life sustaining treatment. Seriously ill or frail patients and their doctors discuss patient wishes and then create a set of physician orders to carry out those wishes. Data show that POLST orders beat living wills and other instruments to ensure patient desires.

Not without controversy, many groups feel patients are too sick to make the "right" choices. No matter where you fall in the political spectrum, POLST is a growing movement, and you should take time out to find out more.

Goodbye Sam Paplanus MD

Sam Paplanus MD, who was part of the founding faculty at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and pioneered the use of electronic medical records for pathology in the 1970s, died in Tucson of a heart attack June 5, his nephew reports.

Dr. Paplanus never lost his Tennessee accept, which always came out in a deep booming voice. In retirement he lead the Pima County Medical Society efforts to look hard at integrative medicine to try and understand what worked and how physicians could incorporate those skills into practice.

In Case You Missed It...
June 12, 2014

AMA Meeting in Chicago

Newspapers and other media have converged on Chicago to follow the American Medical Association House of delegates meeting, and reports are dribbling out. Two things stand out from the initial reports.

1. The physicians are unhappy with AMA lobbying on the SGR fix, ICD-10, etc, and are asking for an independent assessment of the AMA effort.

2. Cheerleading has been declared a sport. While many scoff that AMA designation won't do much, they said the same thing about AMA calls to treat drug addiction and obesity as diseases. Those declarations have aided treatment and insurance payments immensely.

How About Rio 2016

All eyes are on the Brazilian World Cup that starts today with Brazil taking on Croatia in Sao Paulo but at least one person has her sights on Brazil two years from now.

Autumn Ray MD needs to shave six minutes off her best marathon time (2 hours, 49 minutes) to qualify for the American Olympic Team set for Rio in 2016. She has won five marathons already, and was self-coached until recently. She is a full-time emergency department physician at Tucson Medical Center.

Short-sighted

One business trend has policy-makers and public health officials worried. Pharmaceutical companies have recently eschewed giant mergers in favor of buying smaller companies with successful drugs--and then laying off the research staff.

While it makes great sense financially -- you keep the profits from the drugs without having to pay to develop new drugs (risky at best) -- we lose the potential to find new drugs from a variety of hungry companies.

Least you think this is a far away trend, it happened to Scottsdale-based Medicis Pharmaceutical Corp after it was purchased by Valeant Pharma. All 32 researchers were laid off.

 

Return to News listings