Health care reform: prospects and progress.

No longer can the health care community and the politicians work separately as they usually did until just a generation ago. Now, with or without the frustrations involved, both groups need one another and must work together to fulfill their common goal of caring for people. The U.S. economy can no longer sustain the immense and mounting costs of health care: the system must change drastically before the end of the century or there will be revolution or a collapse of the system. For the first time, there is a strong constituency calling for health care reform. The politicians and the health care community must stop ignoring that constituency and instead work together on a health care bill to head off the coming crisis. Such a bill will exact sacrifices and compromises from all sectors, and must control costs and provide universal access to health care. The author outlines proposed bills and other activities that are now being considered, describes a bill that he has helped craft and introduce, and notes that the Bush administration has done an about-face and is now promising a health care bill. He challenges academic medicine to help produce more primary care physicians, gives examples of efforts that are fostering primary care, especially in rural areas, and explains why having more primary care physicians is vital and also a key to cost containment. He ends by again urging the health care community to participate in defining what can be done to avert the coming crisis and establish a workable and equitable health care system.     

VIP interview: John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV, United States Senator

John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV has proudly served the people of West Virginia for nearly 30 years. After coming to the town of Emmons in 1964 as a VISTA worker, Jay Rockefeller made the Mountain State his home. In 1966, he was elected to a two-year term in the West Virginia House of Delegates. He then served four years as Secretary of State, three years as President of West Virginia Wesleyan College, and eight years as Governor of West Virginia. In 1984, he was elected to the United States Senate and was reelected in 1990.     

Bypassing proximal health care facilities for acute care: a survey of patients in a Ghanaian Accident and Emergency Centre

Objective To characterise the population that presents to the Accident and Emergency Centre (AEC) at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) and to identify risk factors associated with bypassing proximal care facilities. Methods A structured questionnaire was verbally administered to patients presenting to the AEC over 2 weeks. The questionnaire focused on the use of health care resources and characteristics of current illness or injury. Measures recorded include demographics, socioeconomic status, chief complaint, transportation and mobility, reasons for choosing KATH and health care service utilisation and cost. Results The total rate of bypassing proximal care was 33.9%. On multivariate analysis, factors positively associated with bypassing included age older than 38 years (OR: 2.18, P 0.04) and prior visits to facility (OR 2.88, P 0.01). Bypassers were less likely to be insured (OR 0.31, P 0.01), to be seeking care due to injury (OR 0.42, P 0.03) and to have previously sought care for the problem (OR 0.10, P < 0.001). Conclusions Patients who bypass facilities near them to seek care at an urban AEC in Ghana do so for a combination of reasons including familiarity with the facility, chief complaint and insurance status. Understanding bypassing behaviour is important for guiding health care utilisation policy decisions and streamlining cost‐effective, appropriate access to care for all patients.     

Safe Patient Handling for Rehabilitation Professionals

Every day, thousands of physical therapists and rehabilitation nurses are required to perform physically demanding therapeutic patient handling tasks that are stressful to the caregiver and increase his or her risk of developing work‐related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). In rehabilitation, patient handling tasks might be classified as “traditional” or “therapeutic.” Traditional tasks have a practical goal, such as transferring a patient from bed to a wheelchair, and therapeutic tasks have more targeted goals such as facilitating patient function and independence. Therapeutic patient handling tasks present a greater risk for caregivers to sustain work‐related MSDs than typical patient handling tasks do because caregivers are exposed to high mechanical loads on the spinal tissues for longer amounts of time. The Veterans Health Administration, Association of Rehabilitation Nurses, and the American Physical Therapy Association endorse the use of modern patient handling technology as part of a comprehensive safe patient handling program for providing therapy in rehabilitation settings. Information about patient handling technology that is effective in reducing the risk of work‐related MSDs from performing therapeutic patient handling and movement tasks is also presented and discussed in this article.     

The effect of maturation and age on oestrogen-induced functional hypertrophy of the female rabbit bladder

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of maturation and ageing on oestrogen-induced functional hypertrophy of the female rabbit bladder. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twenty female rabbits were separated into two groups of 10 each by age, young (immature) and old rabbits and each age group was subdivided into three subgroups. The rabbits in subgroup 1 were controls, subgroup 2 were ovariectomized (Ovx) and subgroup 3 were Ovx and received 17-beta oestradiol (1 mg/kg/day) by a subcutaneous slow-release tablet implant. After 15 days of treatment, the rabbits were killed, the bladder was excised, and the body and base separated; two full-thickness longitudinal strips from the ventral surface of the bladder body, and one full-thickness strip from the base, were prepared for contractile studies. The contractile responses to electrical-field stimulation, carbachol, ATP and KCl were determined for both the bladder body and base strips. In addition, full-thickness strips of bladder body and base were fixed in formalin for histological and immunohistological studies. RESULTS: Ovx plus oestradiol resulted in significant increases in bladder weight and responses to all forms of stimulation in young and old rabbits (except for the response to KCl). Vascular density and the smooth muscle (SM)/collagen ratio significantly increased after oestradiol replacement. Interestingly, the increase in vascular density was greater in the young than in the old rabbits. CONCLUSIONS: The present study shows that oestrogen supplementation mediates a functional hypertrophy characterized by increased contractile responses to all forms of stimulation in both young and old rabbits. The increased contractile responses might be explained by the increases in vascular density and SM/collagen ratio.