LAKEPORT, Calif. – Nurses at Sutter Lakeside Hospital are being honored with The DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses.
The award is part of the DAISY Foundation's program to recognize the super-human efforts nurses perform every day.
The not-for-profit DAISY Foundation is based in Glen Ellen, Calif., and was established by family members in memory of J. Patrick Barnes.
Barnes died at the age of 33 in late 1999 from complications of Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP), a little known but not uncommon auto-immune disease.
The care Barnes and his family received from nurses while he was ill inspired this unique means of thanking nurses for making a profound difference in the lives of their patients and patient families.
Each quarter Sutter Lakeside Hospital’s DAISY Award Committee will elect a nurse to receive The DAISY Award.
At a presentation given in front of the nurse’s colleagues, physicians, patients, and visitors, the honoree will receive a certificate of commendation for being an “Extraordinary Nurse.”
The certificate reads: “In deep appreciation of all you do, who you are, and the incredibly meaningful difference you make in the lives of so many people.”
The honoree will also be given a beautiful and meaningful sculpture called “A Healer’s Touch,” hand-carved by artists of the Shona Tribe in Africa.
Bonnie Barnes, president and co-founder of The DAISY Foundation, stated, “When Patrick was critically ill, our family experienced first-hand the remarkable skill and care nurses provide patients every day and night. Yet these unsung heroes are seldom recognized for the super-human work they do. The kind of work the nurses at Sutter Lakeside Hospital are called on to do every day epitomizes the purpose of The DAISY Award.”
Said Chief Nursing Executive Teresa Campbell, “We are proud to be among the hospitals participating in the DAISY Award program. Nurses are heroes every day. Given the current national nursing shortage, The DAISY Award could not be launched at a better time. It’s important that our nurses know their work is highly valued, and The DAISY Foundation provides a way for us to do that.”
For a complete listing of hospitals currently running the program, please go to www.DAISYfoundation.org .
This is one initiative of The DAISY Foundation whose overall goal is to help fight diseases of the immune system.
Additionally, DAISY offers J. Patrick Barnes Grants for Nursing Research and Evidence-Based Practice Projects and provides assistance to ITP support groups.
More information is available on their Web site, www.DAISYfoundation.org .
Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released a new report showing that for every dollar spent on health care-related fraud and abuse investigations in the last three years, the government recovered $7.90.
This is the highest three-year average return on investment in the 16-year history of the Health Care Fraud and Abuse (HCFAC) Program.
The government’s health care fraud prevention and enforcement efforts recovered a record $4.2 billion in taxpayer dollars in Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, up from nearly $4.1 billion in FY 2011, from individuals and companies who attempted to defraud federal health programs serving seniors and taxpayers or who sought payments to which they were not entitled.
Over the last four years, the administration’s enforcement efforts have recovered $14.9 billion, up from $6.7 billion over the prior four-year period. Since 1997, the HCFAC Program has returned more than $23 billion to the Medicare Trust Funds.
These findings, released Monday in the annual HCFAC Program report, are a result of President Obama making the elimination of fraud, waste and abuse, particularly in health care, a top priority for the administration.
The success of this joint Department of Justice and HHS effort was made possible by the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT), created in 2009 to prevent fraud, waste and abuse in the Medicare and Medicaid programs and to crack down on individuals and entities that are abusing the system and costing American taxpayers billions of dollars.
These efforts to reduce fraud will continue to improve with new tools and resources provided by the Affordable Care Act.
“This was a record-breaking year for the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services in our collaborative effort to crack down on health care fraud and protect valuable taxpayer dollars,” said Attorney General Holder. “In the past fiscal year, our relentless pursuit of health care fraud resulted in the disruption of an array of sophisticated fraud schemes and the recovery of more taxpayer dollars than ever before. This report demonstrates our serious commitment to prosecuting health care fraud and safeguarding our world-class health care programs from abuse.”
“Our historic effort to take on the criminals who steal from Medicare and Medicaid is paying off: We are gaining the upper hand in our fight against health care fraud,” said Secretary Sebelius. “This fight against fraud strengthens the integrity of our health care programs and helps us fulfill our commitment to our seniors.”
About $4.2 billion stolen or otherwise improperly obtained from federal health care programs was recovered and returned to the Medicare Trust Funds, the Treasury and others in FY 2012.
This is an unprecedented achievement for the HCFAC Program, a joint Justice Department and HHS effort to coordinate federal, state and local law enforcement activities to fight health care fraud and abuse.
The administration is also using tools authorized by the Affordable Care Act to fight fraud, including enhanced screenings and enrollment requirements, increased data sharing across the government, expanded recovery efforts for overpayments and greater oversight of private insurance abuses.
Since 2009, the Justice Department and HHS have improved their coordination through HEAT and increased the number of Medicare Fraud Strike Force teams to nine.
The Justice Department’s enforcement of the civil False Claims Act and the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act have produced similar record-breaking results.
These combined efforts coordinated under HEAT have expanded local partnerships and helped educate Medicare beneficiaries about how to protect themselves against fraud.
In FY 2012, the two departments continued their series of regional fraud prevention summits, and the Justice Department hosted a training conference for federal prosecutors, FBI agents, HHS Office of Inspector General agents and others.
The strike force teams use advanced data analysis techniques to identify high-billing levels in health care fraud hot spots so that interagency teams can target emerging or migrating schemes as well as with chronic fraud by criminals masquerading as health care providers or suppliers.
In July, Attorney General Holder and Secretary Sebelius announced the launch of a ground-breaking partnership among the federal government, state officials, leading private health insurance organizations and other health care anti-fraud groups to share information and best practices to improve detection of and prevent payments to scams that cut across public and private payers.
In FY 2012, the Justice Department opened 1,131 new criminal health care fraud investigations involving 2,148 potential defendants, and a total of 826 defendants were convicted of health care fraud-related crimes during the year. The department also opened 885 new civil investigations.
The strike force coordinated a takedown in May 2012 that involved the highest number of false Medicare billings in the history of the strike force program. The takedown involved 107 individuals, including doctors and nurses, in seven cities, who were charged for their alleged participation in Medicare fraud schemes, involving about $452 million in false billings.
As a part of the May 2012 takedown, HHS also suspended or took other administrative action against 52 providers using authority under the health care law to suspend payments until an investigation is complete.
Strike force operations in the nine cities where teams are based resulted in 117 indictments, informations and complaints involving charges against 278 defendants who allegedly billed Medicare more than $1.5 billion in fraudulent schemes.
In FY 2012, 251 guilty pleas and 13 jury trials were litigated, with guilty verdicts against 29 defendants, in strike force cases. The average prison sentence in these cases was more than 48 months.
The new authorities under the Affordable Care Act granted to HHS and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) were instrumental in clamping down on fraudulent activity in health care.
In FY 2012, CMS began the process of screening all 1.5 million Medicare-enrolled providers through the new Automated Provider Screening system that quickly identifies ineligible and potentially fraudulent providers and suppliers prior to enrollment or revalidation to verify the data. As a result, nearly 150,000 ineligible providers have already been eliminated from Medicare’s billing system.
CMS also established the Command Center to improve health care-related fraud detection and investigation, drive innovation and help reduce fraud and improper payments in Medicare and Medicaid.
From May 2011 through the end of 2012, more than 400,000 providers were subject to the new screening requirements and nearly 150,000 lost the ability to bill the Medicare program due to the Affordable Care Act requirements and other proactive initiatives.
The Department of Justice and HHS also continued their successes in civil health care fraud enforcement during FY 2012.
The Justice Department’s Civil Division Fraud Section, with their colleagues in U.S. Attorneys’ offices throughout the country, obtained settlements and judgments of more than $3 billion in FY 2012 under the False Claims Act (FCA).
These matters included unlawful pricing by pharmaceutical manufacturers, illegal marketing of medical devices and pharmaceutical products for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, Medicare fraud by hospitals and other institutional providers, and violations of laws against self-referrals and kickbacks.
This marked the third year in a row that more than $2 billion has been recovered in FCA health care matters.
Additionally, the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch, working with U.S. Attorneys’ offices, obtained nearly $1.5 billion in fines and forfeitures, and obtained 14 convictions in matters pursued under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.
The HCFAC annual report is available at www.oig.hhs.gov/publications/hcfac.asp .
For more information on the joint DOJ-HHS Strike Force activities, visit: www.StopMedicareFraud.gov/ .
For more information on the fraud prevention accomplishments under the Affordable Care Act visit: www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/2012/02/medicare-fraud02142012a.html .
Mothers who are exposed to particulate air pollution of the type emitted by vehicles, urban heating and coal power plants are significantly more likely to bear children of low birth weight, according to an international study.
The study was led by co-principal investigator Tracey J. Woodruff, PhD, MPH, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive sciences at UC San Francisco along with Jennifer Parker, PhD, of the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study, the largest of its kind ever performed, analyzed data collected from more than three million births in nine nations at 14 sites in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
The researchers found that at sites worldwide, the higher the pollution rate, the greater the rate of low birth weight.
Low birth weight (a weight below 2500 grams or 5.5 pounds) is associated with serious health consequences, including increased risk of postnatal morbidity and mortality and chronic health problems in later life, noted lead author Payam Dadvand, MD, PhD, of the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL) in Barcelona, Spain.
In the study, published on Feb. 6 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, the team assessed data collected from research centers in the International Collaboration on Air Pollution and Pregnancy Outcomes, an international research collaborative established in 2007 to study the effects of pollution on pregnancy outcomes. Most of the data assessed was collected during the mid-1990s to the late 2000s, and in some cases, earlier.
“What’s significant is that these are air pollution levels to which practically everyone in the world is commonly exposed,” said Woodruff. “These microscopic particles, which are smaller than the width of a human hair, are in the air that we all breathe.”
Woodruff noted that nations with tighter regulations on particulate air pollution have lower levels of these air pollutants. “In the United States, we have shown over the last several decades that the benefits to health and wellbeing from reducing air pollution are far greater than the costs,” said Woodruff. “This is a lesson that all nations can learn from.”
Particulate air pollution is measured in size (microns) and weight (micrograms per cubic meter). In the United States, federal regulations require that the yearly average concentration in the air to be no more than 12 µg/m3 of particles measuring less than 2.5 microns.
In the European Union, the limit is 25 µg/m3, and regulatory agencies there are currently debating whether to lower it.
“This study comes at the right time to bring the issue to the attention of policy makers,” said study co-author Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, PhD, of CREAL.
Nieuwenhuijsen observed that particulate air pollution in Beijing, China has recently been measured higher than 700 µg/m3.
“From the perspective of world health, levels like this are obviously completely unsustainable,” he said.
Whether these pregnancy exposures can have effects later in life, currently is under investigation through an epidemiological follow-up of some of the children included in these studies.
Prenatal folic acid supplements appear to reduce the risk for autistic spectrum disorders, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about 1 in 88 children in the U.S. have been identified with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
ASDs are amongst the most heritable of mental disorders, but little is known about how the disorder develops. Consequently, methods for diagnosis, prevention, and treatment are limited.
Folic acid (Vitamin B9) is required for DNA synthesis and repair in the human body, and its naturally occurring form – folate – is found in leafy vegetables, peas, lentils, beans, eggs, yeast, and liver.
Taking folic acid supplements during early pregnancy is known to protect against spina bifida and other neural tube defects in children.
In the United States, Canada, and Chile, folic acid is added to flour, so as to automatically provide these supplements to consumers.
Norway does not enrich its flour, and since 1998, the Norwegian Directorate of Health has recommended that all women planning to become pregnant take a daily supplement of folic acid from one month before the start of pregnancy through the first trimester.
Despite this policy, studies from North America and Europe have shown that many pregnant women have a lower dietary intake of folate than what is necessary to prevent neural tube defects.
The report in JAMA emerged from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) and its sub-study of autism, the Autism Birth Cohort (ABC) Study.
This international collaboration (see list of members below) comprises the largest prospective birth cohort devoted to the investigation of gene-environment interactions and biomarker discovery for neuropsychiatric disorders.
A total of 85,176 MoBa babies – born from 2002-2008 – and their parents participated in the study. Prenatal dietary habits were recorded, and families were regularly surveyed for 3-10 years to measure the development of autism spectrum disorders.
A total of 270 cases of autism spectrum disorders were identified in the study population (114 autistic disorder; 56 Asperger syndrome; 100 atypical or unspecified autism; I.e., pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified, PDD-NOS).
Mothers who took folic acid supplements in early pregnancy had a 40% reduced risk of having children with autistic disorder compared with mothers who did not take folic acid.
The reduction in risk was observed in those who took folic acid during the time interval from four weeks before to eight weeks after the start of pregnancy.
Autistic disorder is the most severe form of autism spectrum disorders in children. No reduction in risk was observed for PDD-NOS. For Asperger syndrome, the number of children was too low to obtain sufficient statistical power in the analyses.
The use of folic acid in early pregnancy increased substantially from 2002 to 2008 among women who participated in MoBa. In 2002, 43% of mothers took folic acid supplements; by 2008, 85 percent of mothers did. However, many women began taking folic acid later than recommended, and only half started before the beginning of pregnancy.
The timing of a mother’s intake of folate appears to be a critical factor. Her child’s risk of autism was reduced only when the supplements were taken between 4 weeks before to 8 weeks after the start of pregnancy.
“We examined the rate of autism spectrum disorders in children born to mothers who did or did not take folic acid during pregnancy. There was a dramatic reduction in the risk of autistic disorder in children born to mothers who took folic acid supplements,” says Pål Surén, first author and epidemiologist at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH).
The researchers also analyzed whether the risk of autistic disorder was influenced by the use of other dietary supplements.
They did not find any association between the mother’s use of fish oil supplements (cod liver oil and omega-3 fatty acids) in early pregnancy and the risk of autistic disorder, and no association for the mother’s use of other vitamins and minerals.
In recent years, researchers have started to investigate whether folic acid has other beneficial effects on the development of the fetus’ brain and spinal cord.
A study of language development from MoBa, published in 2011, showed that children whose mothers took folic acid supplements in early pregnancy had only half the risk of severe language delay at age three years compared with other children.
A separate 2011 study from the University of California, Davis, demonstrated a lower risk of autism spectrum disorders in children of mothers who had used prenatal vitamin supplements during pregnancy. Prenatal vitamin supplements contain folic acid in combination with other vitamins and minerals.
Joint senior author Ezra Susser, professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and professor of Psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, stated, “Our findings extend earlier work on the significance of folate in brain development and raise the possibility of an important and inexpensive public health intervention for reducing the burden of autism spectrum disorders.”
“This elegant work illustrates the power of the ABC cohort for not only chipping away at the riddle of what causes autism, but for developing new methods for early recognition, prevention and treatment,” says W. Ian Lipkin, John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health and principal investigator of the ABC cohort.