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Joint Township Hospital
Named Top Community Value
Joint Township District
Memorial Hospital, St. Marys, has been named a Five Star
Hospital by Cleverly and Associates, a leading group in
hospital financial analysis. Joint Township Hospital is
ranked as one of America’s top hospitals in their
category (low intensity teaching) for Cleverly and
Associates’ Community Value Index (CVI). The CVI was
created to provide a measure of the value that a
hospital provides to its community. The Community Value
Index assesses a hospital’s performance in financial
viability and plant reinvestment, hospital cost
structure; and hospital charge structure. The CVI
suggests that a hospital provides value to the community
when it is financially viable, is appropriately
reinvesting back into the facility, maintains a low cost
structure, and has reasonable charges.
Joint Township Hospital was ranked
in the top 20% of the low intensity tracking hospitals
which measured 448 hospitals nationwide with average net
patient revenue of $174 million. Joint Township
Hospital is the only local hospital to be recognized by
Cleverly and Associates as a Five Star community value
hospital.
Kevin Harlan, President and CEO of
Joint Township District Memorial Hospital commented “we
are pleased to be recognized as a Five Star hospital by
a national hospital research organization. A primary
focus of our mission is to provide value to our
community.” Joint Township Hospital is an affiliate of
the Grand Lake Health System.
Mercer Health Board
Views Update Emergency Department Expansion Plan
05/24/07 -
06/27/07
The Mercer Health Board of Governors viewed a more
detailed plan for the proposed Emergency Department
Addition and Outpatient Services Area at their regular
meeting held on Wednesday, May 23. The new plan shows
nine private exam rooms with separate entrances for
ambulances and for walk in patients. Also included is a
disaster planning room, a consult room, a room for EMT's,
and private quarters for the physician on duty.
The Outpatient Services entrance will be located
where the current Emergency Department entrance is now.
This addition will include a large Lobby area as well as
easy access to the Laboratory, Cardiology Services,
Respiratory Treatment, and Imaging services. Also
included is an expanded and new Cardiac Rehabilitation
area. The project is estimated to cost approximately 3.4
million dollars and must be approved by the Mercer
Health Board of Trustees before it can proceed.
Currently, it is hoped that construction can begin
sometime this fall.
The Board also approved purchase of a Chemistry
Analyzer for the Community Medical Center in Celina.
According to Laura Rolfes, Manager of the Laboratory
Department, this new unit will replace the current one.
She said, "With this new equipment, we will be able to
perform many tests that are now being sent to the
hospital. It will save us time and allow us to increase
the number of test we can perform. It may also mean less
wait time for lab results for our Doctors' Urgent Care
patients."
The new unit utilizes "dry slide technology" that
enable the Lab tech to run each test separately as
opposed to running many tests together and having to be
at the station the entire time each test is run. Rolfes
pointed out that the new analyzer is touted as being
more accurate than the current equipment. Also, it does
not require any deionized water, plumbing or drains.
The Board also heard a presentation by Dr. Richard
Kunnes about a program that examines the hospital's
operational expenses and develops suggestions that can
reduce expenses while improving inpatient care. The
program, called "End - Medically Unnecessary Supplies in
Inpatient Care" (E-MUSIC), guarantees a savings for the
hospital over a two year period. It was approved by the
Board. On the financial side, the first month of the new
fiscal year ended on the plus side. It was reported that
income exceeded expenses by $408,873.
Managing Chronic Pain
Copyright 2005 Tanja Gardner
When you find yourself living with pain every minute of
every hour of every day, just getting up in the morning
can seem like too much to ask. When you find it hard to
remember the last time you weren’t in pain, it’s not
unusual for fear and depression to take hold and drag
you into a downward spiral that makes the pain even
worse. Even on good days, exercising can still be the
last thing you feel like doing.
There’s evidence, however, that exercise may be one of
the best things you can do to help manage chronic pain.
A recent (2000) study by Martin Hoffman found that
moderate exercise reduced the amount of pain people
suffering from chronic back-ache perceived they felt.
Other anecdotal studies and reports have confirmed that
sometimes, activity can work wonders.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EXERCISE & PAIN RELIEF
Experts have suggested four possible reasons for the
pain-reducing effect of activity. The first has to do
with endorphins. These are chemicals your body produces
naturally during exercise, which have the same kind of
effect as opiates like morphine and codeine. Endorphins
actually block the perception of pain, and create a
general feeling of wellness, both of which are
invaluable to someone with chronic pain.
A second reason is that regular activity helps to
improve both the ease with which we fall asleep, and the
quality of our rest once we do. Pain, can become more or
less difficult to deal with depending on our resource
levels. Most sufferers experience difficulty sleeping
when the pain is bad, which can prompt another downward
spiral. Something that helps us sleep better, means more
energy and resources, which in turn, allows us to cope
better with the pain we experience.
A third is that exercise helps release tension (see
Exercise & Stress for an explanation of why). Tension,
stress and frustration, as any sufferer of chronic pain
will attest, increase pain levels. This means that
anything that helps relax the body will also usually
help reduce pain levels.
Finally, if the chronic pain occurs after an injury,
targeted exercise can strengthen the muscles around the
injury site, taking pressure off the injured tissue. Of
course, the wrong kind of exercise can actually
re-injure the area too, so it’s important to get
professional guidance from a physiotherapist, or a
personal trainer who specializes in rehabilitation work,
rather than trying to go it alone.
USING EXERCISE TO HELP YOU MANAGE PAIN
An important disclaimer: this article is written
assuming that, if you’re experiencing chronic pain,
you’re already working with a healthcare professional to
manage it (and if not, you need to be!) Check any
suggestions you want to try with that professional, and
follow their recommendations. Also, if an activity
increases your pain levels, don’t do it. It’s OK to have
muscles that are tired and slightly sore the day after.
It’s not OK to experience any joint pain or sharp,
stabbing pain during or after exercise, or anything that
makes your chronic pain worse. If you experience any of
these, seek advice from your healthcare professional as
soon as possible.
That said, the most beneficial kind of exercise depends
very much on the individual. One of Optimum Life’s key
principles is that activity will always do more good if
it’s something you enjoy. This is even more important
when you experience chronic pain, when something you
start dreading or tensing up about can quickly make your
condition worse. Additionally, it helps if you choose
activities that give you a good range of aerobic,
strength, and flexibility exercises. Good potential
choices to start with include walking, swimming,
stationary cycling, yoga or t’ai chi.
Finally, be aware that exercise will be most helpful for
pain management if it’s one out of many tools you use.
Medication, diet, visualization, relaxation, acupuncture
and biofeedback have all been shown to have positive
effects on pain individually – but the best effects seem
to come from taking a multi-disciplinary approach. Take
time to research the different therapies available to
you. There are a number of excellent pain management
sites online – two of the more popular ones include The
Chronic Pain Haven or The Mayo Clinic.
Chronic pain will never be fun to live with, but there
are options available that make it more manageable. Give
yourself the gift of being willing to try out different
options until you find the combination that’s right for
you, and don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it.
Meanwhile, until the next issue, may every day bring you
closer to your Optimum Life.
About the author: Optimum Life's Tanja
Gardner is a Personal Trainer and Stress Management
Coach whose articles on holistic health and relaxation
have appeared in various media since 1999. Optimum Life
is dedicated to providing fitness and stress management
services to help clients all over the world achieve
their optimum lives. To read more articles like this
one, please subscribe to Optimum Fitness News at http://optimumlife.co.nz/Newsletter%20Signup.htm.To
find out more about how you could benefit from online
personal training, please visit http://www.trainerforce.com/optimumlife/.
To find out more about holistic fitness and stress
management please visit http://optimumlife.co.nz,or
contact Tanja on tanja@optimumlife.co.nz.
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What does it mean for a woman to have Attention
Deficit with or without hyperactivity (ADHD)?
Much public talk around ADHD centers on the
hyperactivity part, but the hyperactivity is the lesser
of the two problems. Early research focused on the
disruptive behavior in school so early statistical
evaluations concluded that boys were more often affected
than girls.
More recent research has focused on the attention
problems, and now doctors know that girls and women are
more often affected by the attention deficit problem.
Furthermore girls, even when hyperactive, don't present
the same public symptoms as boys.
How do girls differ from boys?
Girls with attention deficit with or without
hyperactivity tend to fit into one of four profiles,
none of which rivals the boys in their noisy, disruptive
behavior.
* Julia likes to play with her brothers, climb trees,
and run about, but at home she is generally calm and
likes to please her Daddy. People call her a "tom boy".
She tries hard, though she is messy and often
incomplete, and her mediocre school results are accepted
as the best effort she is capable of.
* Donna sits at the back of the class room and is often
staring out the window, but when her teacher calls on
her she smiles sweetly and makes a big effort to do as
she is told. At other times she appears to be paying
attention, but in reality she is quite lost. She works
more slowly than others in her class and usually fails
to finish work assigned. But because she is cooperative
and sweet, no one suspects that she has a problem. She
is just naturally "dreamy" or "spacey".
* Susan talks and talks and giggles, often thinking
about the next recreation or a weekend party. When she
tries to relate a happening, she tends to be very
disorganized, jumping about from the beginning to the
end and back again. She is fun to be with because she
bubbles with enthusiasm and ideas, but gets extremely
upset when anyone disagrees with her. She is
hyper-talkative and hyper-emotional and may act "silly"
to disguise her disorganization and forgetfulness. As
she gets older her hyperactivity may lead her into risky
experimenting with cigarettes, drugs or sexual adventure
to compensate for her poor school performance.
* Deborah did very well in school even obtaining a PhD
and an excellent job. Although she had worked very hard
to achieve her academic success, much harder than her
peers, her attention problems did not really become
evident until she married and had children. Then the
sheer complexity of life with work, husband and children
led to a severe depression.
Hyperactive boys are likely to get the support they need
because they are disruptive, while girls are mostly
better behaved so they do not attract attention. The
attention they do get is less likely to focus on the
attention problem then on the character problem: Julia
is not lady like, Susan is a social butterfly not an
academic, Donna is just a bit slow, and Deborah has a
touch of the baby blues. ADHD is rarely considered.
What happens when girls grow up?
Many children with problems of attention grow up to be
adults with problems of attention. The symptoms you
might see in adults include disorganization, emotional
reactivity, under-achievement, low self-esteem, impaired
relationships, or depression; of these disorganization
ranks as the most pervasive.
Disorganization can take on mythic proportions.
Disorganization means overflowing cupboards, piles of
stuff with baby piles, missed meetings, chronic
lateness, befuddled thinking all related to an erratic
attention system. One woman reports having so many
things to do and not knowing where to start she just
sits down.
In addition, there is the frustration and shame of
finding so difficult what others do so easily, the
feeling of abandonment as colleagues and friends move on
with their lives while you seem to be trapped like
Sisyphus forever organizing papers which instantly
disorganize. The others stop asking what are you doing
these days? Because the answer is always the same
"organizing".
Job Description : Wife, Mother
Women with ADHD are doubly handicapped by the social
expectations put on them in their feminine roles as wife
and mother, roles which require a high degree of
organization.
For a moment, consider what attention deficit means. You
are familiar with dimmers, these gizmos which allow you
to adjust the brightness of a lamp: low and sultry for
an evenings cuddle but high for a serious work session.
Brains need an electric current to function just like
your lamp. In ADD brains, poor use of dopamine in the
synapse acts like a dimmer. ADD brains are effectively
operating with insufficient current, so they need
stimulation to turn up the power. Novelty and risk are
ways ADD people can wake up.
Back to our house wife who is faced everyday with the
same thousand things to do, the same dishes to put in
the dish washer, take out of the dish washer; the same
dirty socks to collect, wash , pair up to put away, the
same shirts to iron, etc. It's all boring. Then there
are the children to clothe, feed, get out the door, take
to the doctor or the tennis lesson, social engagements
to organize.
There's that word again: "organize". Deciding what to do
first or which is most important or remembering to pick
up the dry cleaning requires an active brain, but the
ADD brain is functioning with the dimmer on minimum.
Susan who escaped school as fast as possible felt
equally a failure as a housewife.
At work, life may or may not be more congenial. If a
woman like Deborah, with a PhD, has a job which
challenges her abilities and builds on her interest, she
may thrive. On the other hand, women like Julia or Donna
who have difficulty in school are more likely to find
low level jobs which, like house work, demand the very
skills they lack: filing, typing neatly without errors,
or remembering customers orders in a restaurant.
The work place often requires a great deal of
socializing which may be difficult for someone like
Donna who lives in her own world or even Susan the
socialite who tends to be emotive or Julia with her "Tom
boy" style who may find herself shunned by both men and
women. And Deborah may be "too" intelligent.
What's Next? Turning up the dimmer.
For anyone, men and women, with Attention Deficit,
knowledge is the first step to change. Learn what turns
the lights up in your brain. What interests you? Make
room in your life for activities which work for you.
Have some fun.
Learn to ask for help. The Web has lots of information
about ADHD some of it good, some not so good. Once you
know that the problem exists, you can start looking.
Happy hunting.
About the Author:
Sarah Jane Keyser, ADD coach for adults of all ages with
an international practice helping you to find joy and
fulfillment with ADHD. Learn more about ADHD at http://www.CoachingKeytoADD.com
or sign up for Zebra Stripes, a free E-zine for ADHD at
http://www.coachingkeytoadd.com/newsletter/newsarchive.html
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