Category Archives: Blog roll

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Tampa Bay Times: Between surgeries at Tampa General, a place to recharge

By Justine Griffin

The Starbucks inside Tampa General Hospital is open every day. [Photo by ALESSANDRA DA PRA | Times]

DAVIS ISLAND — The wheeze of an espresso machine dulls the Christmas music playing on the overhead speakers, but the customers waiting in line aren’t listening anyway.

A nurse in a surgical cap with green and red snowflakes is on her phone, shouldering through the line with two coffee cups in her hands. “I talked to Dad, he’s bringing the turkey,” she says.

Another nurse, dressed in plain, blue scrubs, is balancing a tray of four steaming coffees and talking to a co-worker in Mandarin. Three young doctors join the end of the line, still wearing blue booties over their Nikes and face masks tugged down around their necks. “He’s bleeding from the ear, and they don’t know if they should send him to the E.R. or to the clinic,” one explains to the others.

The mid-morning rush at the Starbucks inside Tampa General Hospital is dying down just after 10:30 a.m. on the Thursday before Christmas. The scheduled morning surgeries are well under way by now.

Starbucks isn’t the only place that serves coffee on the sprawling campus, but it is a popular attraction, tucked into the maze of the first floor of the main hospital.

The coffee shop looks and smells like any other in the chain. The signature green emblem hangs in the window.

But hospital staff and visitors stream in and out from 6 a.m. to midnight. Surgical technicians eat from lunch boxes at the wooden tabletops. Families gather on the plush, leather chairs in the corner and look over patient paperwork. On Facebook, customers express thanks for “good coffee” while they wait for news or fuel long shifts.

It’s business as usual even just before Christmas.

The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) is interrupted briefly by a call over the speakers: “Code purple, NICU.” A few people in line check their phones, then put them away.

The scrubs come in a rainbow of colors: Turquoise. Maroon. Navy blue. Dark green. Light green. Some surgical caps have Gators or Seminoles on them. Some have candy canes.

Some visitors wear blinking Christmas lights and festive sweaters. Others look tired. They wear sweatpants, flip flops and their hair in messy buns.

A thin, balding man wearing scrubs that are so loose he’s bunched and rolled the waistband several times around his hips, gives another doctor in a white coat a warm hug as they wait in line. They discuss a patient who had a heart attack. “Tiny, tiny arteries and tiny, tiny crystals,” he describes with a thick accent. “Nothing major. She will be okay.”

They both smile.

The hospital can’t shut down for the holidays. The baristas won’t, either.

They’re open every day. Even on Christmas.

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Tampa Bay Times: As politicians pledge solutions to the opioid epidemic, advocates say the key will be money

By Justine Griffin

With deaths from opioid abuse rising dramatically, state and national leaders have stepped up recently to acknowledge the crisis. But those on the front lines of the epidemic say the best thing they can do is provide money for much-needed treatment. [Times files]

The opioid epidemic has grabbed the spotlight of late, with state and national leaders promising action.

Gov. Rick Scott pledged in September to push for tighter prescription rules and budget $50 million for treatment and beefed up law enforcement. A month later, President Trump declared the epidemic a public health emergency and outlined some possible ways to fight addiction and make certain drugs less available.

But local advocates, medical professionals and researchers who work every day with those affected by opioid addiction are hesitant to celebrate until they see meaningful action.

“We certainly want to commend the governor that he’s recognizing that he needs to make a larger commitment to combat this epidemic,” said Anne Swerlick with the Florida Policy Institute in Tallahassee. “But both on the fiscal and policy side, the state has not opted to expand Medicaid, which would be leveraging millions of dollars to provide substance abuse programs for people in need.”

She worries that much of the $50 million Scott talked about would go to law enforcement, “which isn’t the same as providing people coverage for programs that have been proven to help.”

Scott’s office says the money would go toward statewide drug treatment, counseling and the Florida Violent Crime and Drug Control Council, a program launched in 1993 to help local law enforcement agencies with violent crime or drug investigations.

The governor also plans to propose legislation that would limit opioid prescriptions to a three-day supply, or seven days under strict conditions; require those who prescribe or dispense medication to use a statewide database that monitors prescriptions; combat unlicensed pain management clinics; require health professionals to get and stay educated about opioids; and open the door for federal grants to help with the problem.

But Scott’s record has some people questioning his commitment. In 2011, he eliminated the Office of Drug Control and chose not to expand Medicaid. And state funding has fluctuated drastically over the years for organizations like Operation PAR in Tampa Bay, which provides drug treatment and mental health services for those dealing with addiction, said Marvin Coleman, the group’s vice president of community relations.

“We need more help along the lines of funding,” Coleman said. “In order to treat a client, we need the infrastructure in place to help them: the facility, the doctors, the nurses. It takes dollars. The public awareness of the issue is great. This crisis hits all corners, and so many people have been touched by this epidemic. But the only way to fight it is to fund treatment.”

Despite his doubts, Coleman said he’s hopeful. He said lawmakers are asking the right questions this year, and looking for the best ways to help and allocate money to programs with good track records.

“A lot of centers like us sustained budget cuts last year. Substance abuse centers are never at the top of the list,” Coleman said. “But they ended the last legislative session talking about the issue, and we hope they begin the next one by keeping this topic on the table.”

The 2018 session begins in January.

Read more here.

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Tampa Bay Times, Study: Mental quickness exercises can lower risk of dementia

By Justine Griffin

Where did I leave my keys?

As we age, it can take longer to answer a question like that.

Humans begin to lose cognitive ability at age 25. Dementia, or the decline of memory most commonly seen in aging adults, takes hold early on and is gradual, but accelerates in the seventh or eighth decade of our lives.

However, a local researcher and the lead author on a ground-breaking medical study has found a way to reduce the risk of dementia by a remarkable 29 percent. The answer? Computer games.

Computerized brain-training exercises studied by Jerri Edwards, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at the University of South Florida, are the first intervention of any kind to reduce the risk of dementia in older adults, according to the study, just published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions.

Read more here. 

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Tampa Bay Times: When the goal is getting to the ER fast and cheap, some choose Uber over 911

Most hospitals in the Tampa Bay area don't track how often ride-sharing drivers drop off or pick up patients. But at Tampa General Hospital, pictured here, they are "here quite a bit over the course of a day," said spokesman John Dunn. [LOREN ELLIOTT | Times]

By Justine Griffin

Matt Lavin had just arrived in Charlottesville, Va., for a business trip when he started feeling sick.

By the time he got to his hotel around 11 p.m., he felt excruciating pain.

“I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew something wasn’t right,” said Lavin, an attorney who lived in Washington D.C. at the time but is also the medical director for a Florida-based chain of addiction recovery centers. He had good insurance through his employer, but still second-guessed calling an ambulance for help.

“My deductible was like $5,000 or something like that. And it was the beginning of the year. I didn’t know how much the ambulance was going to cost me, and I’m away from home in this hotel,” Lavin said.

So he requested a ride on Uber.

The driver arrived in just three minutes, helped him into the car and sped to the hospital, with Lavin keeled over from intense pain his abdomen.

Later Lavin, 48, would find out his appendix burst. He ended up having emergency surgery that night. But Lavin says he saved himself thousands of dollars by choosing Uber, the ride-sharing company that connects passengers with taxi-like independent drivers through a smartphone app, instead of calling 911.

“I knew they would be fast,” Lavin said of Uber. “But I think (the driver) was pretty freaked out. I was in a lot of pain and I had to lie down. He was new to Charlottesville and didn’t know where the hospital was. If I’d taken an ambulance, I would have gotten a bed right away. Instead I had to walk in and wait like anyone else. But I think I paid $20, which is much better than the $5,000 I paid the one time I was in a car accident.”

Lavin is not alone. Ride-sharing drivers in Tampa Bay and beyond are noticing an uptick in rides to and from the emergency room as consumers try to avoid spending what could be thousands of dollars for an ambulance.

Read more here.

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Tampa Bay Times: Coming soon at two Tampa Bay area hospitals: a cancer treatment that could replace chemo

By Justine Griffin

Benjamin Gilkey, 7, with his mother, Laura Gilkey, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 2014. He was treated at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hosptial in St. Petersburg until his death in February. Doctors say CAR-T treatment might have helped "Benji" had it been available at the time. "It will draw more people to Johns Hopkins," Laura Gilkey said. [Photos courtesy of Laura Gilkey]

A new cancer treatment that could eventually replace chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants — along with their debilitating side effects — soon will be offered at two of Tampa Bay’s top-tier hospitals.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in August approved the first ever Chimeric Antigen Receptor Therapy, or “CAR-T cell therapy,” for children and young adults up to age 25 suffering from leukemia and other blood and bone cancers. And just this week, the agency approved the same immunotherapy for adults with large B cell lymphoma, a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg will be the first and only pediatric hospital in Florida to become a certified treatment center. Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa also will be among the first in the country to offer the same therapy on adults with blood cancers like B cell lymphoma.

CAR-T uses white blood cells from the patient’s immune system and re-engineers them in a lab to target and wipe out cancer cells. Specialists draw the cells from the patient’s blood and “re-program” them to go after blood and bone marrow-type cancer cells instead of the flu or any other bacteria or infection they would normally attack, said Dr. Frederick Locke, a principal investigator for the experimental therapy at Moffitt.

During the laboratory process, scientists work with receptors, which are molecular structures in cells that tell them what to do based on messages they receive in the bloodstream. In this instance, they add a chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR, to each T-cell. The CARs are programmed to target a specific protein, called CD19, found on cancer cells.

Then the newly trained T-cells are infused back into the body to do their job.

Read more here.