Elizabeth Edwards said this weekend that she prefers Hillary Clinton’s health plan over that of Barack Obama’s but fell short of endorsing either Democratic candidate for president.

She blasted Republican candidate John McCain’s health plan and said that she and the Arizona senator have something in common: “Neither of us would be covered under his health policy.”

At a conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists, Edwards spoke passionately about health policy and why she feels that McCain’s plan “is the wrong direction for the country.”

Read a full story about this in the L.A. Times.

Obama’s plan “is not true universal coverage,” she said.

Clinton’s plan, Edwards said, is the most similar to the one proposed by her husband, Sen. John Edwards, before he dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination two months ago. John Edwards has not endorsed anyone for president.

Elizabeth Edwards, a breast cancer survivor, announced last year that her cancer had returned. It has spread to her bones and is incurable. She told a room full of reporters that she is “actually doing really well,” although she isn’t liking the side-effects of her medications and the fact that her co-pay just doubled.

“The cancer is still there but it’s under control,” Edwards said.

Here’s a new tool to help determine what people think of the care they received in hospitals. The federal government has compiled data that hospitals are required to provide to different agencies. The data looks at how well hospitals provide care. It also asks patients how they rate the care they received.

The report highlights interesting similarities and differences among hospitals in the Lower Hudson Valley.

According to the report, 67 percent of patients at Good Samaritan Hospital in Suffern said that their nurses communicated well, while 71 percent of patients at Nyack Hospital felt that way. When it came to their doctors, 79 percent of Good Sam patients said they communicated well, while 75 percent of Nyack patients felt the same way.

Some interesting tidbits:

At Good Sam, 59 percent of patients felt that their room and bathroom were always clean, while 70 percent of Nyack patients gave the thumbs up to cleanliness.

Just 43 percent of Good Sam patients felt that the areas around their room was quiet at night, while 48 percent felt Nyack hospital rooms were quiet.

Good Samaritan patients reported greater overall satisfaction than at Nyack, according to the report: 63 percent said they would definitely recommend the hospital, while 57 percent of Nyack patient said the same.

To see the report go to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

There’s a lot of news and information about the cost of health care. But, what about the cost of health?

A PBS series “UNNATURAL CAUSES …is inequality making us sick?” seems cut the care part out of the conversation to look at factors like income, employment status, race and zip code to find out what contributes to your health — bad and good.

The first segment: “In Sickness and in Wealth” will air on Channel 13 this Saturday at 2 p.m. Check www.pbs.org/unnaturalcauses to find out more about it and when the other segments are showing.

The producers of the series spoke today at the health journalism conference along with Dr. A Hal Strelnick, director of the Institute for Community & Collaborative Health at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

What they all revealed is that your health is determined by much more than your genes and your environment. It goes deeper than whether you see a doctor or not. Much of it has to do with education and employment. A large part of it has to do with stress from that employment or unemployment as the case may be for many.

They found that even rich, well-educated people tend to die younger if they live in places strained by inequality and social disconnection.

In these uncertain economic times, surely this topic will not go away too soon.

I’ll admit I was skeptical when I heard Dennis Quaid was going to speak about medical errors (what does he know? I thought). But the actor really does know quite a bit about the horror of a medical mishap.

That’s because he lived it.

For about 41 hours last November, he and his wife watched as their newborn twins bled uncontrollably after they received 1,000 times the recommended concentration of the blood thinner heparin at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A.

Maybe I shouldn’t use the word “watched.” He and his wife had left the twins at the hospital for the night. When they arrived there the next morning, they were met by the hospital’s “Risk Management” team.

Even though they had called the evening before and were told that their twins were “fine,” Quaid said, “The overdose was happening right under our noses.” His pediatrician and nurses knew there was a problem and didn’t tell them.

Nurses and pharmacy technicians failed to check the drug vials before administering the wrong dosage. The Quaid kids nearly died.

The story broke on the celebrity Web site TMZ, but as Quaid spoke to a room full of health journalists at Health Journalism 2008 in Arlington, Va. he said “it should have been a hard news story.”

In fact, a similar mistake killed three children in Indiana a year earlier. It happens more often than you think, Quaid told us. About 100,000 per year, his research showed.

In the hour-long, candid conversation, Quaid said that the experience motivated his family to start The Quaid Foundation, aimed at raising public awareness of medical errors.

“The source is always the same: seems to be human error,” Quaid said.

Though he doesn’t place all the blame on nurses or other hospital staff, (he actually had a lot of sympathy for over-worked nurses) he does want to see more done to make “the system” accountable.

Now that his twins have recovered, he wants to look for ways to eliminate the human error by looking at the entire system, he said.

And, he wants to hear your medical error story. To tell it, visit the Quaid Foundation Web site: www.thequaidfoundation.org.

I arrived this afternoon in Arlington, Va. for the annual Association of Health Care Journalists conference. I became a member of the group just a few months ago when I started on the health and medical beat.

There’s a schedule packed with all sorts of speakers: medical experts, fellow journalists — and even some celebrities. There are a ton of topics covered from vaccines to organ transplants to Big Pharma. It will be a whirlwind, as these conferences always are, but I hope to post to this blog along the way.

… and, of course, bring back a ton on new skills to LoHud! Stay tuned.

Investigators with the state Department of Health have received 435 reports of illness among people who visited an upstate indoor waterpark earlier this month.
Test show that that the norovirus, also called the Norwalk virus, is to blame for hundreds of cases of illness among people who visited the Six Flags Great Escape Lodge and Indoor Waterpark, in Queensbury. The virus causes the sudden onset of severe nausea, vomiting and diarrhea that lasts for a day or two.
Norovirus is typically very contagious and persons can become infected by having direct contact will an ill person, eating or drinking contaminated food or liquids, or by touching contaminated surfaces and then placing their hand in their mouth.
Representatives of the Department of Health have been at the Great Escape since the outbreak was reported on March 17. The department is making sure that the resort complies with infection control measures, including cleaning, disinfection, increased hand hygiene and safe food handling measures, are implemented.
Ill resort employees are required to not return to work and remain out of work for at least 48 hours after they become free of symptoms. The resort has hired an infectious disease specialist to advise them on infection control practices.
To report illness associated with the Great Escape resort, contact the Department of Health at at 1-800-278-2965.

Wearing a tall, white chef’s hat, 10-year-old Du’an Robinson today proudly displayed his culinary creation: cut celery stalks filled with cream cheese and topped with raisins.

“I call it ‘ants on a log,’” Robinson told Westchester County Executive Andy Spano as a few of his classmates looked on. “I made it myself.”

Robinson was among the 12 finalists in a healthy eating recipe contest at Richard J. Bailey School in Greenburgh. Spano was at the school to kick-off “No Junk Food Week,” part of a program that works with schools and parents to help kids eat healthier and exercise more.

Started in 2004, No Junk Food week now incorporates 51 schools in Westchester and nearly 30,000 students who pledged to give up chips, candy or french fries.

At the Bailey school, many students said it wasn’t too hard because teachers had them create healthy alternatives. The students there were junk-food-free all month. A school task force worked with the Westchester County Health Department in the last year after a study showed that 45.5 percent of the school’s fourth graders were at risk for serious health problems because they were overweight.

The school also improved the nutritional content of its lunches, added more organized play into recess and cut the lunch line in half to give children more time to play outside. Kids also now get each Wednesday off to a moving start by walking a half-mile loop through the halls.

For all their hard work, the county treated the students to Edy’s Slow-Churned Ice Cream — lower in sugar, fat and cholesterol than regular ice cream.

Victoria Jones, 9, didn’t need the ice cream. She showed off her Yum Yogurt dessert and said the best part of it was “making it.”

Her classmate, Janet Cuevas, 9, disagreed. She quickly said the best part was “tasting it!”

 

The Rockland County Department of Health and Good Samaritan Hospital are starting a new walking program at the Palisades Center Mall in West Nyack. The Walk & Roll program will meet every Tuesday at 10 a.m. beginning April 8 for seven weeks.
Each week will feature an exercise session led by a trainer from New York Sports Club and a brief program from mall vendors. Planned programs include:

• Week 1, April 8: Drop and Shop program, New York Sports Club
• Week 2, April 15: Fun with Build-A-Bear
• Week 3, April 22: Kids Nutrition, Department of Health
• Week 4, April 29: Cosmetics with Lord & Taylor
  Participants will receive free healthy refreshments for both adults and children. There will be activities for the children and goodies. Participants will have the chance to earn prizes ranging from a pedometer to gift cards for stores located at the mall. Members can take advantage of free, monthly activities, health and wellness screenings, and raffle drawings.
  To register for the program, visit the mall’s customer service desk located on Level 1 near the Cheesecake Factory. For more information about the Walk & Roll program or Walk It! call the Department of Health at 845-364-2500 or the Palisades Center at 845-348-1000.

If a teenager can walk into a health clinic and ask for a round of birth control pills without her parents’ permission, should she also be able to ask for a round of Gardasil shots?

That question is at the center of a story today written by Cara Matthews from our Albany Bureau. The story talks about how Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, D-Scarsdale is sponsoring a legislation that would allow young women to get the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil without parental consent if they are under 18. To read the story, click HERE.

The vaccine protects women from the four most popular strains of the human papillomavirus, the most common sexually transmitted infection among women in the Lower Hudson Valley and across the country. The infection, commonly called HPV, can cause cervical cancer.

Some readers posted their thoughts at the bottom of Cara’s story disparaging Paulin’s efforts to make the vaccine available to women with their parents’ knowledge. Other comments show that readers are clearly opposed to Planned Parenthood offering any of their services without parental consent.

What do you think?

The Westchester Region End-of-Life Committee will address the difficult issues of death and dying at its second annual conference on April 4 at New York Medical College in Valhalla.

The topic for the interdisciplinary and interfaith program is “Stand by Me: The Palliative Care Concept and Approaches,” and it will take place from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. The conference is aimed at medical professionals, social workers, the clergy, caregivers and families. Admission is free.

Palliative care is an option that focuses on improving the quality of life for individuals and their families facing chronic and life-threatening illnesses.

The speakers, workshop leaders and panelists at the conference are all prominent in the field.

The End-of-Life Committee is a consortium of more than 30 agencies under the auspices of Fordham University’s Ravazzin Center on Aging and the Pace Women’s Justice Center at Pace Law School.

Lead sponsors are the Westchester County Department of Senior Programs and Services (DSPS), the Visiting Nurse Association of Hudson Valley/Hospice Care in Westchester and Putnam, Visiting Nurse Services in Westchester and the New York Medical College School of Public Health.

To register, fax you name, affiliation, email address, phone, the number of attendees in your party and your workshop preference to Visiting Nurse Services in Westchester at 914-682-1477.

Those interested can also register by sending an e-mail to wdawe@hospiceofwestchester.com or by calling the Visiting Nurse Association of the Hudson Valley at 666-7616, Ext. 235. Parking is free, but carpooling is suggested.