Rochdale Village Health

Original article can be found at nytimes.com

Obesity and the form of diabetes linked to it are taking an even worse toll on America’s youths than medical experts had realized. As obesity rates in children have climbed, so has the incidence of Type 2 diabetes, and a new study adds another worry: the disease progresses more rapidly in children than in adults and is harder to treat.

“It’s frightening how severe this metabolic disease is in children,” said Dr. David M. Nathan, an author of the study and director of the diabetes center at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It’s really got a hold on them, and it’s hard to turn around.”

Before the 1990s, this form of diabetes was hardly ever seen in children. It is still uncommon, but experts say any increase in such a serious disease is troubling. There were about 3,600 new cases a year from 2002 to 2005, the latest years for which data is available.

The research is the first large study of Type 2 diabetes in children, “because this didn’t used to exist,” said Dr. Robin Goland, a member of the research team and co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. She added, “These are people who are struggling with something that shouldn’t happen in kids who are this young.”

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“History will look back at how we allowed the Jamaica Queens community to die while the legislative body toyed with healthcare reform” – Dr. Robert Evans

Original article posted at QChron.com

A Jamaica group wants to purchase the recently closed Peninsula Hospital in Far Rockaway, revamp the facility and integrate it into a larger healthcare provider system.

If granted approval, Community Wellness Centers of America plans to work closely with the state Department of Health to reopen the hospital. Their new strategy would focus on clinical treatment of chronic illnesses and diseases, preventive screenings and educational programs.

CWCOA, led by president and founder Robert Evans, claims “it has the expertise, resources and affiliations with medical institutions, medical schools and local physicians to systematically integrate the hospital’s services into a community-wide program and provide the State of New York relief from further financial burden and loss of critically needed hospital services.”

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The office of New York State Senator Shirley Huntley recently released the following statement regarding phase 2 of her Prescription for Change addressing the disparities in healthcare of the 10th district of New York.

Phase 2-My Prescription for Change, Road Map to Recovery (final)

Community Wellness Centers of America, LLC (CWCOA) is pleased to release the following strategic report developed for Southeast Queens, Jamaica, New York with specific recommendations and detailed information which we believe would be helpful in considering State-wide policy for New York.

As you are aware of, CWCOA was founded due to the loss and lack of accessible critical and essential healthcare services in Jamaica, New York. As we enter into Phase II of mitigating the healthcare delivery crises in Queens, we have developed the attached comprehensive report submitted to Governor Cuomo, providing our analysis and recommendations for legislators and the New York State Department of Health to consider.

A study’s results are surprising in a field that focuses more on black and gay men. The cities include Baltimore, New York, Washington and Atlanta. (article taken from mediatakeout.com)

African American women in six U.S. cities are becoming infected with HIV at a rate five times the national average for black women, and closer to the rates of some African countries, according to a new study.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and around the country who made the findings suspected the rates were relatively high in these “hot spots” that have battled the epidemic for decades, but the numbers still came as a surprise in a field that tends to focus more on black and gay men.

The researchers found that in Baltimore; Atlanta; Newark, N.J.; New York City; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; and Washington, the annual rate of infection was 24 per 10,000 black women. Nationally, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that black women become infected at a rate of 5 per 10,000.

The rate in Congo is 28 per 10,000.

The study was conducted with funding from the National Institutes of Health by researchers who are part of a national consortium called the HIV Prevention Trials Network. The data were presented March 8 at the 19th annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle.

Baltimore declared HIV a public health emergency in 2002, but the numbers of infected people continue to rise, particularly among at-risk groups, including IV drug users and gay and bisexual men.

Dr. Patrick Chaulk, assistant commissioner for HIV and STD services in the Baltimore Health Department, said a large share of the city’s resources to combat HIV go to men because they make up two-thirds of new cases in the city. Nationally it’s about three-quarters, according to the CDC.

But the city and partners at the state and in academic and nonprofit circles haven’t forgotten the women, Chaulk said. He cited programs aimed at drug users and sex workers, among others.

Every week, one city project sends a van with health workers to the Block, Baltimore’s red-light district. The workers have built trust among the people there, and not only test for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases but also offer reproductive health services, needle exchanges and assistance in securing health insurance and housing.

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At any checkup, blacks were 1.5 times more likely to test positive for infection with one of the HPV strains that raise cancer risk, said study leader Kim Creek  (article taken from nydailynews.com)

CHICAGO — Provocative new research might help explain why black women are so much more likely than whites to develop and die from cervical cancer: They seem to have more trouble clearing HPV, the virus that causes the disease.

Doctors have long thought that less access to screening and follow-up health care were the reasons black women are 40 percent more likely to develop cervical cancer and twice as likely to die from it. The new study involving young college women suggests there might be a biological explanation for the racial disparity, too.

If further study confirms this novel finding, it would make the HPV vaccine even more important for black women, said Worta McCaskill-Stevens, a prevention specialist at the National Cancer Institute. The vaccine is recommended for all girls starting at age 11.

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Psychological testing shows white physicians have friendlier attitudes toward anonymous white people than toward black people. But is this linked to unequal treatment?

By KEVIN B. O’REILLY, amednews staff. Posted Sept. 28, 2009. (original article)

White physicians, like white lawyers and white people with doctoral degrees, are not immune from an implicit preference for white people over black people, according to a study in the August Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.

Psychological testing shows that doctors do not differ from the general population or from other highly educated people in unconscious racial bias, the study said. But critics doubt whether these test results are associated with unequal treatment of black patients. Other research, including a new study of patients with breast or colon cancer, has concluded that disparities are driven not by racial bias, but by differences in where patients get medical care.

Between 2004 and 2006, more than 2,500 doctors took the Implicit Association Test, or IAT, which attempts to measure test-takers’ unconscious preferences by asking them to quickly associate “good” words such as joy and love and “bad” words such as evil and nasty with white or black faces. White, Asian and Hispanic doctors showed preferences for whites over blacks, while black physicians showed no significant preference, the study said. These unconscious preferences for whites were two to three times’ higher than the physicians’ self-reported attitudes.

The gap between physicians’ conscious attitudes and their implicit preferences could help explain why black patients receive worse care, said study lead author Janice A. Sabin, PhD.

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(taken from crainsnewyork.com)

Bankruptcy court official forced to pull plug on flailing efforts to revive Queens medical center. Hundreds of jobs gone for good. Nursing home remains open; some other parts of hospital complex could be repurposed.

Peninsula Hospital Center will permanently close, bringing to an end a chaotic chapter in its life marked by six months in bankruptcy and a failed rescue attempt by an investor that had no experience in running a hospital.

The state Department of Health shut down the laboratory of the Far Rockaway hospital on Feb, 23, an action that sealed Peninsula’s fate. With no revenue from patient admissions for the past month, Peninsula no longer has sufficient working capital to stay open. Its affiliated nursing home will not shut down.

The February lab closure triggered a series of dramatic events in the weeks that followed. The federal official overseeing the bankruptcy, the Office of the U.S. Trustee, requested the appointment of a new operator after making the case that the lab closure was evidence of Peninsula’s mismanagement.

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Hospital Closure Worries Boro Officials

The New York State Department of Health has reported in the past that Queens County did not have a sufficient number of beds before Parkway and the Caritas hospitals closed, and that Queens County was is in urgent need of additional beds.

Queens County currently has 27% of New York City’s population and effectively lost 32.5% of its bed capacity with those hospital closures, and had the lowest hospital bed ratio per 1,000 populations of all New York City Boroughs prior to Peninsula Hospital now closing for the second time.

Boro officials should be requiring critical operational reports from hospitals which at minimum include a hospitals financial condition, clinical disclosure regarding patient care services, oversight and outcomes, and compliance measures taken to insure clinically that patients are protected.

The organization and delivery of safe medical services requires internal medical staff oversight from the various medical directors and the hospitals Quality Assurance Committee. Medical services require documented policies and procedures for staff to follow which is paramount for successfully exceeding minimum state and national regulatory and licensure requirements in providing “Trusted” and “Safe” delivery of patient care services to the community.

Hospitals and their ancillary support medical services must embrace a culture which addresses quality of care practices, supported by well-defined clinical practice guidelines ensuring the safety and welfare of the public at large. This process requires more than a documented mission statement elaborating on “Patient Excellence”, and unless staff is well trained and understands the significance of their individual responsibility, problems will continue to surface.

The loss and continued deterioration of healthcare services in Queens, and lack of evidence based medicine for the prevention of chronic illnesses and disease will continue to plague the communities at large without appropriate intervention by “Boro Officials”

Proper planning and integration of a comprehensive health care plan has always been the hallmark for success, and in its absence, further loss of critical healthcare services may occur in the Borough of Queens.

Boro Officials should require full transparency from hospitals with regularly scheduled releases of pertinent financial and clinical information which will provide the public with information necessary as to their choice service providers in time of need.  The reporting of operational efficiencies and inefficiencies will strengthen a hospitals commitment to continuously improve and monitor patient care.

Richard Wildzunas
Chief Operating Officer
Community Wellness Centers of America, LLC