Health and Welfare

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says Kentucky has spent five weeks at its highest level of flu, which is far more than last year. That means more than half of the state’s regions have reported an increased number of cases. Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services spokesperson Gwenda Bond says although this year’s outbreak is more severe than previous years, it is not too out of the ordinary.

Conversion to electronic health records hasn't produced hoped-for savings in health care costs predicted by a 2005 report, and it's had mixed results in improving efficiency and patient care, according to a RAND Corporation report. RAND's 2005 predictions helped drive growth in the electronic records industry and encourage billions of dollars in subsidies from the federal government to hospitals and doctors to implement such systems, Reed Abelson and Julie Creswell of The New York Times report.

A coalition of health groups say they will give state Rep. Susan Westrom, D-Lexington, the most public support ever for a bill to ban smoking in Kentucky restaurants and workplaces, a bill she's tried to get passed twice, Jacqueline Pitts of CN2 reports. The coalition, which includes Smoke-Free Kentucky and the American Lung Association, revealed plans yesterday for a two-week ad campaign about the benefits of a statewide smoking ban law.

A newspaper and online advertising campaign calling for "a comprehensive, statewide smoke-free law" is hitting Kentucky news outlets this week, as the legislature convenes. The campaign was launched by Smoke-Free Kentucky Coalition, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The ad can viewed here.

University campuses appear to be the newest battlegrounds over tobacco use. As Northern Kentucky University prepares to take its first steps toward becoming a tobacco-free campus, the University of Cincinnati has backed off because of the lack of widespread support. NKU’s governing Board of Regents is expected to vote today on banning tobacco from the Highland Heights campus.

Kentuckians now favor a statewide smoking ban by a margin of 3 to 2, according to the latest Kentucky Health Issues Poll conducted last fall for the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky. Interestingly, 38 percent of the Kentucky adults polled said they were smokers, much more than the 29 percent found by ongoing federal surveys. Among those identified as smokers, 37 percent favored such a law, while it was favored by 68 percent of former smokers and 75 percent of those who said they had never smoked.

State lawmakers could narrow the focus of last year's "pill mill bill" during the legislative session that begins tomorrow, to concentrate on adults with long-term prescriptions for frequently abused painkillers, John Cheves of the Lexington Herald-Leader reported yesterday. Doctors, hospitals and patients have complained that HB 1 in its current from "restricts too many drugs in too many clinical settings, needlessly complicating medical care in an effort to shut down storefront pain clinics that recklessly hand out prescriptions," Cheves writes.

Environmental and food-safety inspections will be reduced by layoffs in four counties served by the Cumberland Valley District Health Department because of changes in the state Medicaid program, Nola Sizemore of the Harlan Daily Enterprise reports. Health departments in Harlan, Rockcastle, Clay and Jackson counties will lose a total of 14 employees later this month. (Enterprise photo: Harlan County Health Department)

The majority of Kentuckians — 59 percent — support a statewide smoking ban, says a poll conducted by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky. Last year, the poll said for the first time that most Kentuckians supported banning smoking in  public establishments. This year, fewer than  38 percent of Kentuckians opposed such a ban. The rest had no opinion.

Even though most of the hospital industry wasn't happy with the fiscal-cliff deal that will only pay half the $30 billion needed to avoid a 27 percent Medicare fee cut for doctors, the deal gave about 200 rural hospitals, including 10 in Kentucky, reason to celebrate. It extends a program that pays hospitals up to several millions of dollars a year because they have fewer than 100 beds, are located in rural areas and have a high percentage of Medicare patients, Phil Galewitz of Kaiser Health News reports.

One of Pike County’s emergency medical service firms is officially shut down. Questcare EMS officially ceased all business operations effective Dec. 31 and is now slated for liquidation, according to a statement from the company. The announcement also signals the beginning of a void in EMS coverage in Pike County, one which other ambulance services are now attempting to fill.

Is your community's hospital one of the many rural hospitals considering sale, merger or affiliation with a larger hospital or group of hospitals, all options that are becoming more common, partly due to federal health-care reform? A recent article in HealthLeaders magazine, which examines some of the considerations, may inform your coverage.

FRANKFORT - Ten local health departments across the state will receive grants to expand colon cancer screening services, Gov. Steve Beshear announced Thursday. Beshear sought funding for the program in last year’s biennial budget proposal in an effort to reduce colon cancer incidence and mortality rate in Kentucky, according to a state news release. According to data from the Kentucky Cancer Registry at the University of Kentucky, about 2,600 new cases of colon cancer will be diagnosed in Kentucky each year and nearly 900 people will die.

The core of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is helping people get health insurance, beginning next year. That will be relatively simple for some people, but complicated for others, as this infographic produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation for the Journal of the American Medical Association shows. For a larger, clearer, PDF of the chart, click here. In most states, including Kentucky, a key question remains unanswered: Will the state opt to expand Medicaid eligibility to households with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level (138 percent with a fudge factor)?

Kentucky Children's Hospital at the University of Kentucky is reviewing its cardio-thoracic surgery program and referring surgical patients to other hospitals, "but the reasons why are unclear," Brenna Angel reported Dec. 21 for WUKY-FM, the university-owned station.

A recent abduction related case in Lexington reaffirms this type of act can occur within families.  A California grandmother faces charges in Kentucky after being arrested pushing her granddaughter without gloves, shoes, or a coat in a stroller on UK’s campus.  Fayette County Sheriff Kathy Witt admits custodial abductions often don’t attract the attention given stranger kidnappings.