January 21-27, 2008
| Also online at http://www.vrha.org/weeklies.html | January 21-27, 2008 |
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 The VCOM View is now available. Click the logo to read. |
| VRHA News |
| Members in the News |
Leadership Change at New River Valley Free Clinics By Donna Alvis-Banks - Roanoke Times
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| Virginia Rural Health News |
| A Dark Addiction |
| By Nick Miroff - Washington Post The crowd is gathering early in the dirt parking lot outside the Clinch Valley Treatment Center, the only methadone clinic within 80 miles. Third in line, Jeff Trapp smokes Winstons in his pickup, watching the cars turn off the highway and settle behind him, tires crunching on cold gravel, headlights glaring. It is 2:45 a.m., and Trapp has been awake for two hours. The clinic does not start dosing until 5. Like Trapp, many of the patients who filled the lot one recent morning have jobs at far-off mines that start at 6 or 7. They sleep upright in their vehicles, slumped against the steering wheel, dressed for work in steel-toed black boots and coveralls lined with orange reflective strips. Dark rings circle their eyes where the previous day's coal dust didn't wash off. Work in the mines hasn't been as good as it is now in a generation. With per-ton prices doubling in the past six years, Virginia unearthed about $1.6 billion worth of coal in 2006, much of it to feed the growing energy demands of the Washington region. But it is a boom clouded by drugs. Nearly a decade after OxyContin slammed into southwestern Virginia and much of Appalachia, the abuse of prescription painkillers in the region is worse than ever, police and public health officials say. Publicized efforts to crack down on drug dealers and manufacturers through tougher street-level enforcement and tighter prescription regulations have failed to curb the crisis, and the result is a quiet catastrophe unfolding largely out of sight, in private bedrooms and isolated trailers far from the drug war's urban front lines. A record 248 people died of overdoses in Virginia's western region in 2006, more than those who died from homicides, house fires and alcohol-related car accidents combined. That was an 18 percent increase from 2005 and a 270 percent increase from a decade ago, state medical examiner records show. The problem is most acute in Virginia's poorest rural areas, and it is not limited to miners. In 2006, accidental pain pill overdoses killed more people in Tazewell County (pop. 44,000) than in Fairfax County (pop. 1.1 million). In Wise County, where Trapp lives and the per capita income is $14,000 a year, the fatal overdose rate for pain pills was 13 times those of Loudoun and Fairfax counties. Read the full article.
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| Health Commissioner Appointed |
Governor Kaine has announced the appointment of Dr. Karen Remley as Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Health. Remley currently is the vice president of medical affairs at Sentara Leigh Hospital in Norfolk and an assistant professor of Pediatrics and Community Faculty School of Public Health at Eastern Virginia School of Medicine. Remley replaces Dr. James E. Burns, who had served as interim commissioner following the retirement of Dr. Robert Stroube on January 1, 2008. The State Commissioner of Health is responsible for managing the operations of the Virginia Department of Health, coordinating the department's emergency preparedness and response efforts, and providing leadership for the Commonwealth's public health system in order to protect and promote the health of all Virginians.
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| Stakeholder Group Forming |
The Pilot Project Stakeholder Group will meet on March 14, 2008 at 1:00 PM at the Robius Fitness Center in Richmond, Va. |
| Legislative Update |
The Virginia General Assembly introduced a wide variety of bills last week; some of which may have an impact on health in rural areas. To read more about the bills below, click the bill number. HB 1431 Dental assistants; requires Board of Dentistry to regulate practice thereof.
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| National Rural Health News |
| Rural Residents Get Fewer Organ Transplants |
Americans living in small towns and rural areas are less likely to get organ transplants or be placed on waiting lists for transplants, a new study found. The study of almost 175,000 potential transplant recipients showed that those living outside metropolitan centers "were 8 percent to 15 percent less likely to be wait-listed and 10 percent to 20 percent less likely to undergo heart, liver and kidney transplantation than patients in urban environments," the report said. The report suggested two possible explanations for the findings: different patterns of illness in rural areas, or the difficulty of getting on a transplant list. The second factor is probably more significant, transplant experts said. "You can't just get listed easily," said Dr. Pang-Yen Fan, director of kidney transplantation at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center in Worcester. "It requires both medical and surgical evaluation, lots of testing, visits to a transplant center. Many of the patients we see live in a 30- to 50-mile radius of Worcester. For them, coming into Worcester is a big deal. So I don't think the results of the study are surprising." Read the full article.
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| Foreign Docs Exploited; Patients Suffer Too |
By Marshall Allen -
Las Vegas Sun A government program to address a national health care crisis by placing foreign doctors in America's rural towns and inner cities is being undermined by employers - mostly U.S. doctors who profit by exploiting the physicians and diverting them from the patients who need them. Stories of abuses within the program, which receives little government oversight, are whispered among foreign doctors in hospital corridors, reported online and heard by colleagues in foreign medical schools. And the abuse appears to be a primary reason that fewer of them are participating in the program, the Las Vegas Sun has found. Some of the foreign doctors are cheated financially and worked to dangerous levels of exhaustion, and they can't easily escape the jobs because the employers sponsor their visas. The doctors are sharing their experiences with colleagues back home - in places such as Ghana, Haiti, India and Pakistan - who are now finding other paths to U.S. residency to avoid being bullied and treated as indentured servants. The result: The physician shortage is getting worse for the 34 million Americans who don't get appropriate health care because there aren't enough doctors where they're needed. And the many employers who abide by the federal law are themselves being undermined by colleagues who soil the program's reputation. Read the full article.
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| Rural Health Care to Link Doctors |
By Dieter Bradburg - Blethen Maine Newspapers Doctors, hospitals and other health care providers in rural areas of northern New England will soon be able to share X-rays and other medical images, patients' records and video teleconferences with a new high-speed computer network. The New England Telehealth Consortium will link 555 clinics, doctor's offices, hospitals, public health centers and universities across Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Health care experts say the network will essentially create a "second Internet," dedicated solely to meeting the geographic and technological challenges of providing quality health care in rural areas. "This is going to develop an infrastructure that's really going to position our rural areas to be players in the health information age," said Charles Dwyer of the Maine Office of Rural Health and Primary Care.
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Do you have exciting rural health news that needs to be shared? Do you know of an upcoming health-related event which should be on our calendar? E-mail Beth O'Connor at: boconnor@vcom.vt.edu |
Disclaimer: The VRHA circulates state and national news as an information service only. Inclusion of information is not intended as an endorsement. If you prefer to receive email in plain text or rtf format instead of html or if you receive this email more than once, email VRHA. |
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Virginia Rural Health Association The leading voice for rural health in Virginia |
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