Erie Beats
Join Erie Family Health Center on Thursday, February 24, 2011 at LaSalle Power Company (500 N. LaSalle) from 6-9PM for Salud and the City, an evening to directly help Erie patients! Tickets go on sale November 10, 2010. For more details visit our Facebook page! Cocktails, appetizers, live music performed by South of 80, silent auction and more! Cheers to a healthier Chicago!
Erie Beats
Whether or not you’re a parent, you know that it’s that time of year again: Chicago children are heading back to school! And Erie Family Health Center wants to make sure students have everything they need on the first day. In addition to new backpacks and fresh notebooks, thousands of kids -like Giselle, Daniel and Jordan- have access to affordable, high quality health care through Erie’s three school-based health centers. Please help Erie make this upcoming school year a healthy one! With your donation, Erie will be able to provide medical care, behavioral health services, and comprehensive health education to more children.
Through your support, a child with asthma will receive an inhaler and get the support he needs to manage his condition, a parent will be linked to food stamps, a fifth grader will be able to tend the vegetable garden on campus, and the therapist will help another child deal with the feelings of depression and anxiety that led to poor grades and disruptive classroom behavior.
Make a donation by September 30th so kids can start the year off healthy and ready to learn!
Beats this week:
1) Next week is National Health Center Week and it is going to kick off with a bang! This Friday, Health and Human Service Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, is sitting down for a tele-town hall conference with the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) to discuss Health Center Program and the Affordable Care Act.
2) Still trying to decide what to do for National Health Center Week? Lucky for you NACHC is keeping a great list. Check out all the awesome events going on in Illinois next week.
3) Sad news for Illinoisans: more Illinois residents are using food stamps than ever before. An estimated 780,000 Illinois families are enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), up nearly 12% from the year prior.
4) Happy (kind of) Birthday ARRA funds! After a year of having American Recovery and Reinvestment funds in our pockets, community health centers have provided care to approximately 2.1 million new patients! This is quite an accomplishment considering the goal was to provide care to 2.9 million new users over two years!
5) It is the news story that just keeps unfolding: Governor Quinn announced today the last of the planned cuts to the Illinois state budget. The new cuts include school transportation grants, operating funds for psychiatric hospitals and developmental centers, and a subsidy to Peoria’s Wildlife Prairie Park.
Erie Beats
Last week Northwestern University stopped by Erie West Town Health Center to learn more about our Electronic Health Records System and what it means to our centers. Check out the video below to learn more!
Beats this week:
1) Great news for health centers around the country: late last week the House Labor-HHS Subcommittee on Appropriations proposed that the Health Centers program be funded at 2010 levels. So what exactly does all this fancy language mean? Well, when coupled with the funds from the Affordable Care Act, health centers will now be able to serve more patients than ever before – to the tune of 20 million more patients over the next five years!
2) Have you ever heard of mystery patients? This phrase does not even have a Wikipedia page! So just think mystery shoppers – only they are medical patients! A recent study conducted by six Chicago-area research institutions utilized mystery patients who served as actors for a doctor visit in order to measure how often physicians were able to identify social factors that could impact a patient’s health or their treatment (such as homelessness). The results: these factors were often overlooked or missed.
3) Want to give yourself nightmares? Then check out this list of agencies that still need to be paid by the state of Illinois for services rendered in the last fiscal year.
4) This week Michelle Obama and Jill Biden teamed up to announce an important new health initiative. Starting in the Fall, health insurance plans will be required to cover preventive care, such as some cancer screenings, diabetes and blood pressure screenings and routine vaccines, without charging a deductible or co-payment.
5) You heard it first here at Health Beats: Erie is proud to celebrate National Health Center Week by inviting all to attend the Erie Helping Hands Health Fair on August 12 from 3:00-7:00pm. Come by to learn important health education and receive free blood pressure and glucose screenings!
Beats this week:
1) Happy Fiscal Year 2011 blogosphere! Unfortunately, for some in Illinois, this new fiscal year brings a great deal of unhappiness. On July 1, Governor Quinn held a press conference in which he laid out nearly $1.4 billion in cuts to the state budget.
2) This week President Obama made a key recess appointment, placing Dr. Donald Berwick in charge of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The appointment of this position is even more important than before because of health care reform’s impact on the Medicaid and Medicare programs.
3) Around 40 million doses the swine flu vaccine (around $260 million worth) are set to be destroyed in the United States because they have expired. And that’s not the end of it: another 30 million doses are still available but set to expire in the near future.
4) Starting out the summer with some pep in their step, the White House launched a new health care reform website for consumers on July 1. This new website is part of an overall strategy to use the internet and social media as a means to inform people about health care reform. Earlier this week, the White House used their YouTube page to solicit questions from constituents about health care reform, which were then answered by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius earlier today.
5) Twitter and the blogosphere have been abuzz lately with health care folks linking to and discussing the pros and cons of electronic medical records. Erie was even featured in one of the many news stories that came out within the last week. Check us out in the Chicago Sun-Times over the weekend!
Erie Beats
Good afternoon,
Today Erie Family Health Center has a real challenge for you. The underinsured and uninsured of Chicago have urgently requested your service.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to double the impact of your support to Erie Family Health Center. An anonymous funder will match your donation to Erie, dollar for dollar!
Join forces with Erie to impact the health and happiness of our patients and community. Donate now to make a difference in the lives of patients like:
PATIENT: Maria, pregnant
ISSUE: Gum disease
SOLUTION: Erie Dental Health Center
PATIENT: Juan, diabetic
ISSUE: Blurred vision
SOLUTION: Erie’s Optometry Services
PATIENT: Carolina, breast cancer survivor
ISSUE: Needed a mammogram and care
SOLUTION: Erie’s Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening Program
Erie needs YOU to achieve Mission:Possible! This email will not self-destruct, but the opportunity to double your gift won’t last long. Make your gift count twice today.
Good luck!
Beats this week:
1) In September you will begin to see health clinics in Targets throughout Chicago and the suburbs. This announcement follows the expansion of health clinics in CVS and Walgreens stores across the country.
2) Earlier this week, community health centers received some exciting news: the Corporation for National and Community Service decided to fully fund the Community HealthCorps at the requested level for the very first time. With uninsured patient visits up by 21% at community health centers, the $6 million in funding for Community HealthCorps will help to meet this intense demand for care.
3) Celebrity chefs recently took on a challenge: they ate lunch at public schools in the DC area. Through this experience they all came to the same conclusion: schools lunches lacked nutrition, variety and taste. Now months later, these chefs are taking action by teaching cooking classes to students and parents and getting on the front lines for the First Lady’s Let’s Move! Initiative.
4) We are a little late to the news on this one but last month Australian researchers released a study that found a link between diabetes and family history. The study was fairly basic: they took families with and without history of diabetes and overfed them. The results were very interesting, with those with a family history gaining more weight on average and demonstrating a greater resistance to insulin.
5) This week Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the release of $83.9 million in grants to support the expansion of health information technology. Erie was thrilled to be among the list of grant recipients, accepting on behalf of the Alliance of Chicago Community Health Services.
Beats this week:
1) A report released today from the American Heart Association analyzed the amount of physical education required in schools across the United States. The report, which was released in partnership with the National Association for Sport and Physical Education found that while more states are requiring students to take physical education, few actually require students to exercise for a specific amount of time.
2) Attention all community health data enthusiasts: this week Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius revealed further details about the new Community Health Data Initiative. Under this initiative HHS health data will be made freely available so that software developers can create innovative applications and make the data more useful for consumers and communities.
3) The Illinois legislature has spoken: budget cuts for Illinois will be decided by Governor Quinn. As such, Quinn is now facing the tough challenge of determining what gets slashed in the FY2011 budget for Illinois. On the chopping block: social services, education and health care. Quinn is keeping mum on what he plans to cut but stated that he hoped to release further details within the month and through the summer. Again, stay tuned!
4) This week, the Chicago Dental Society’s blog, Open Wide, wrote about two Illinois programs that provide orthodontia care to patients whose parents are unable to afford the expensive care. Way to go to the Illinois Society of Orthodontists and Smiles Change Lives for their amazing work!
5) The Swiss company, Novartis, announced disappointing news this week: its new ovarian cancer drug will not be moving to the market. The company had hoped the medication, called patupilone, would be more effective than other drugs for advanced cervical cancer patients, however, the late-stage trial proved that it did not.
We’ve heard the chants of “Yes, we can!” We watched health care reform pass through the House of Representatives and the Senate. Above all, we’ve had a magic number tattooed in our minds since the first whisper of health care reform came out of Washington. 32 million. 32 million people that, once the health care reform package comes to fruition in 2014, would be able to enter into a physician’s office without financial fear.
The idea of just handing out health insurance to those in need of it seems wonderful. Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. In a way, it’s like giving everyone in Chicago a free CTA pass for one day. You may have the means to ride the El, but if the train is full, you’re not going anywhere. The same idea goes for health care. In April, Dr. Francis blogged on Beats Per Minute about the shortage of primary care doctors available to care for this surge of now-insured patients and how community health centers could be the new training ground for upcoming generations of primary care doctors. Also back in April, Health Beats blogged about the upcoming physician shortage, as well as the possibility of reducing some of the restrictions on nurse practitioners to help lessen the blow of incoming health care demand surge.
