Category: Public Health Issues - Part 26

Behavioral health coaching key to doctors’ success

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon WESTMINSTER Exam room No. 1 at Westminster Medical Clinic is a striking departure from the classic, sterile rooms in a typical doctors office. The walls are pale lavender. Soft light from a lamp washes over a plush couch and easy chair. Candles and a CD player sit on a bookshelf next to wellness and self-help books along with the bible of the American Psychiatric Association, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Yet, this oasis is a place within the walls of a busy primary care practice where doctors can lead a patient, giving them…

Prescription for child obesity: ‘Get Fit’

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon The young sisters come to the doctors office proudly carrying pink and purple water bottles clinking with ice and etched with the logo that says Get Fit. The medical assistant checks their height, weight and blood pressure, then walks Gabby, 9, and Laila, 6, into the exam room past a medical tray. There are no vials with shots or medical tools. Instead, the tray is filled with shiny red apples, the first sign that this is a very different kind of doctors appointment. Welcome to cutting-edge care in the escalating war on child obesity. The girls…

Family fights obesity scourge

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon AURORA The dinner plates at the Veleasquez home were as colorful as a Cezanne painting. On this Saturday evening, the family was dining on pink grilled salmon, baked purple potatoes, yellow Colorado sweet corn and a mlange of steamed vegetables: carrots, green beans and cauliflower. Dessert was bright orange sweet potatoes, fresh from the grill. There was no butter sauce or sour cream to drench on anything. Instead green limes garnished each plate and Karla, 8, was squeezing them on her purple potato to add extra zest. This kind of healthy, nutrient-packed meal is the norm…

Opinion: Medicare, Medicaid reach milestone,
 but budget battle could bring changes

By Bob Semro July 30, 1965, was a milestone in American history. On that day, the Social Security Act of 1965 was signed into law. That legislation, implemented a year later (45 years ago), introduced two new programs, Medicare and Medicaid. We take them for granted now, often without realizing how much they have achieved and how much we rely on them. In 1964, before the implementation of Medicare, 49 percent of Americans 65 years and older had no health care coverage and 30 percent of seniors lived below the poverty line. The average life expectancy in the United States…

Free birth control: Will it reduce unwanted pregnancies?

By Myung Oak Kim As a 20-year-old college student, Emma Carpenter faces a dilemma common among young women: how to access and pay for birth control. The Denver native gets oral contraceptives, through the health clinic on the University of Colorado Boulder campus where she is entering her senior year. Emmas pills initially cost her $50 a month, so she switched to a cheaper pill, which carries more side effects, but costs only $20 a month. Emma says she considers herself fortunate to have the awareness and the financial means to regularly use contraception. One of her friends cant afford…

Cancer struggle leads back home

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon ALAMOSA The grandmother sports chic short gray hair, her post-chemo look. She tells her doctor that she finally feels well enough to tend her vegetable garden this summer a sure sign that her cancer is abating. Dr. Madeleine Kane, a visiting medical oncologist and hematologist from the University of Colorado Cancer Center inDenver, confirms at this July follow-up appointment that the outlook is excellent. Your tumor markers are all normal, Kane tells Carla Shawcroft, 65, a mother of four and grandmother of eight, who lives in Manassa, about 30 miles south of this clinic at the…

Former board president challenges sale of hospitals

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon A former board president and negotiator of the original hospital sale that created the Colorado Health Foundation is warning that the foundation could lose control of $1.45 billion in profits from its current proposed sale of seven hospitals and should cancel the deal. Dick Anderson, who was chairman of the joint venture board that ran the hospitals from 1995 to 2000, filed comments with Colorados attorney general on Thursday. He believes that the original intent of the deal was to protect community assets, not to serve as an investment engine for the Colorado Health Foundation. Anderson…

Opinion: Businesses, communities key to health care debate

By Anne Warhover Theres been a lot of talk both fiery rhetoric and thoughtful discourse on the national stage about fixing health care since Congress and President Obama took a crack at overhauling the entire system last year. Fast-forwarding to mid-2011, health care reform is moving along, but many key provisions still face legislative, judicial and budgetary scrutiny not to mention an onslaught of partisan bickering and negative ads from both sides of the political aisle. Whether the pillars of the Affordable Care Act and the health care debate succeed in expanding access, improving quality and reducing costs, one fact…

Steak or scallops? Hospitals add luxuries to attract the well-heeled

By Myung Oak Kim Concierge service. Jacuzzi tubs. Bacon-wrapped scallops or New York strip steak prepared by professionally-trained chefs and brought to your room. These amenities can be found at most new hospitals in Colorado and across the country. Gone are the days of sterile, white hallways, fluorescent lights and cloth curtains separating patients in the same room. The newest hospitals offer bountiful natural light, warm-colored walls and floors, soothing art and private patient rooms with large windows and relaxation videos. Sky Ridge Medical Center in Lone Tree features fireplaces on every floor. Childrens Hospital Colorado in Aurora offers video…

More calls for resignations of “insider” from industry-heavy health board

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon A second large consumer group representing 500,000 Coloradans joined the call Tuesday for the resignation of a health industry insider from Colorados new health exchange board. The Colorado Consumer Health Initiative called on Eric Grossman, vice president of strategy and government affairs for TriZetto, a Greenwood Village health IT company, to step down from the nine-member board. Gov. John Hickenlooper appointed Grossman to serve as on the board that will design a new online health insurance marketplace for Colorado by Jan. 1, 2014. He was supposed to be one of the non-industry appointees, but consumer groups…