Luckner Doing Well After Heart Surgery in Naperville

Luckner doing well after heart surgery. Please see this Chicago Tribune article.

More on Rescue 33

Chillicothe questioning OSF's Mission statements regarding Rescue 33.

See this article.

Rescue 33 Denied

An e mail was sent to Rescue 33 from the Project Medical Director at OSF stating that Rescue 33 in Chillicothe is finished.

The meeting was held at an undisclosed location and the press and public were not allowed by OSF to attend.

See this article in today's Peoria Journal Star.

There They Go Again....

Rescue 33 in Chillicothe has been permanently suspended by OSF's physician in charge of EMS.

OSF will not disclose where the meeting deciding Rescue 33's fate is going to be and the press and public have been banned from attending. The meeting is on Monday (10/1/2012).

See this article in today's Journal Star.

Comments that follow the article do not show much trust in OSF or AMT.

I think it is a done deal already. Rescue 33 is toast and the people of Chillicothe won't even know why. That is too bad.

I would love to have to eat my words. We will see.

A Broken Heart in a Cholera Treatment Center

Luckner

In June of 2011 I was notified by a physician friend of mine, Dr. Jen in Port-au-Prince, that she had a young patient named Luckner with a serious heart problem. She wanted to know if I would examine him and evaluate him as a candidate for heart surgery through Haitian Hearts.

I agreed to do this but I was located in central Haiti about three hours north of Port-au-Prince working in a Cholera Treatment Center at Albert Schweitzer Hospital. I asked Dr. Jen if Luckner could come up to Schweitzer and I would examine him. She said he would make the trip.

At the Cholera Treatment Center we had a tiny admit room. Hundreds of sick patients were coming every day with cholera. We put IV's in the sickest cholera patients in this room and sometimes we would have six or seven very ill patients in shock slumped in their chairs or lying unconscious on cots. Sometimes the patients were even slumped against each other in these close quarters.

One day a young man showed up. Even though I had never seen him I thought he had to be Luckner. He looked too strong and healthy to be a sick with cholera.

The young man was  Luckner and he looked scared. He was scared to be around so many deathly ill appearing cholera patients. I could tell he wanted to leave the Cholera Treatment Center as fast as possible.

I examined him quickly and could hear the loud murmur coming from his leaky aortic valve.

I assured Luckner that we would help him as much as we could and that he could head back to Port-au-Prince. He seemed to be a perfect candidate for repair or replacement of his aortic valve.

So I e mailed Dr. Jen and explained to her that Haitian Hearts would do what we could to get Luckner admitted into a US medical center for heart surgery.

I sent Luckner's history and physical and his echocardiogram to Dr. Bryan Foy a heart surgeon in Illinois who has operated many Haitian Hearts patients in the past. Dr. Foy reviewed the echo and agreed that Luckner needed surgery.

Dr. Foy operates out of a number of medical centers in northern Illinois. Edward Hospital in Naperville is one of them and they accepted Luckner for surgery.

During the past year Dr. Jen and her group of friends in Port-au-Prince were able to obtain a medical visa for Luckner. And they brought him to Naperville about one month ago. He is with a wonderful host family there.

And guess what? Dr. Foy operated on Luckner several hours ago and replaced his leaky aortic valve. (As I post this Luckner is in stable condition in ICU.)

This fortunate 25 year old man just received a new lease on life. My thanks to EVERYONE for all their help with Luckner during the last year.


John A. Carroll, MD
www.haitianhearts.org

Little Problems and Big Problems in Peoria's EMS

See this article in todays Peoria Journal Star.

Sometimes it is hard to see the forest through the trees.

Chillicothe Loses Ambulance Service and AMT Takes Over...

See this article and comments.

George and Keith at OSF

George Hevesy, MD

Keith Steffen

George is just about gone. He announced his resignation a few days ago.

What will this mean for Keith who has supported George for many years?

See this post.

This could get interesting.

Stay tuned.

Palliative Care Medicine

Palliative Care Medicine is "the active total care of patients whose disease is not responsive to curative treatment".

I think Palliative Care Medicine can be good in many ways. But it should not be forced on the patient or family.

The Archives of Internal Medicine in 2008 found that patients who received palliative care services cost the hospital $1696 to $4908 less per admission. And insurers notice these things. And so do hospital administrators who may not care for your loved one as much as you do.

So beware if the Palliative Care team of doctors and nurses seems extra-nice. Financial concerns for their hospital could be driving them as much as their desire to help the patient.

Mindless Menace of Violence

“Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great

to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land.

Of course, we cannot vanish it with a program nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time,

that those who live with us are our brothers and sisters;

that they share with us the same short moment of life;

that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance

to live out our lives in purpose and in happiness,

winning what satisfaction and fulfillment we can.

Surely this bond of a common fate, this bond of a common goal,

can begin to teach us something.

Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow man;

and surely we can begin to work a little harder

to bind up the wounds among us and

to become in our hearts brothers and sisters, compatriots once again.”

Robert F. Kennedy      ( 1925 – 1968 )

Insignificant but Important

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
Let's work together for a better tomorrow...

M Gandhi

Is OSF's CEO Worth 2.2 Million Dollars?

Sister Judith Ann Duvall
Chairperson of OSF St. Francis Healthcare System
(Photo by Peoria Journal Star)

Kevin Schoeplein, CEO of OSF Healthcare System in Peoria, received a salary of 2.2 million dollars in 2009. See this article.

Yet, OSF lets their own Haitian Hearts patients die in Haiti with no medical care. And Sister Judith Ann, pictured above, told me multiple times that OSF would never turn down a Haitian child for medical care. But they have.

Sister refers to OSF as a "sacred ministry." Unfortunately, this sacred ministry is a 5 billion dollar not-for-profit enterprise that has lost its core values.



John A. Carroll, MD
www.haitianhearts.org

OSF Mission Continues...

Long Waits in ER Dangerous for Patients

Dr. Ackroyd-Stolarz found that older people who stayed longer in the emergency department were more likely to have adverse events. In her retrospective cohort study, she included 982 patients 65 and older. The average age was 77.8 years, and 75 percent of them experienced a prolonged ED stay of six hours or more. Studying the records, she found that 140 had adverse events. Adjusting for total ED stay, she found that long stays in the emergency department were associated with a higher risk of adverse events. Those who suffered an adverse event stayed in the hospital twice as long as those who did not (20.2 days versus 9.8 days). Because the patients stayed in the hospital longer, they occupied acute care beds, an increasingly scarce commodity that exacerbated ED crowding.

Even when there are readily available beds, elderly people tend to stay longer in the emergency department because they come in with more complex illnesses and require a longer workup. But by far, the lack of inpatient beds is the most significant contributor as to why they are waiting, Dr. Ackroyd-Stolarz said. There is evidence that the elderly are more likely to be admitted to the hospital. They don't want to go to the emergency department unless they are really sick because they know they will wait, she said.

The higher risk for these patients often comes from a decreased physiologic reserve. They are often sicker with comorbid conditions, she said. In the future, we need to demonstrate that this association holds true in other hospitals.

Fixing the problem requires a system approach, said Dr. Ackroyd-Stolarz, not just focusing on the emergency department. People outside of emergency medicine will say, 'If we just fix how they do their business,' but it goes beyond the doors of the emergency department, she said, noting that hospitals need to investigate bed management and what occurs in the community, such as whether services are available to help avoid ED visits. If we provide more primary care services to nursing home residents, we may prevent that transfer to an emergency department in the middle of the night because there is no physician in the nursing home, she said.

Emergency Medicine News
July, 2009

Corrupt Corporations...Large Medical Centers Not Excluded

Company executives are paid to maximize profits, not to behave ethically. Evidence suggests that they behave as corruptly as they can, within whatever constraints are imposed by law and reputation. 


New York Times
July 11, 2012

Death in Haiti Deserves Thought

Photo by John Carroll

"Death in Haiti can be cruel, raw, and often devastatingly premature. There is often no explanation, no sympathy, and no peace, especially for the poor. Death's ubiquity, however, does not mean that it deserves any less attention or thought."

New England Journal of Medicine
July 5, 2012
Antonia P. Eyssallenne, M.D., Ph.D.

Doing the Right Thing

“You don’t want to be the outsider who betrays the institution; whistleblowers are always the weirdos,” Lessig said. “There are so many ways to rationalize doing the easy thing. And it’s really easy for us to overlook how our inaction to step up and do even the simplest thing leads to profoundly destructive consequences in our society.”

I asked Cory Booker, the Newark mayor, why he ignored his security team and made a snap decision to run into a burning house to save his neighbor. He said his parents taught him to feel indebted to all the people who had sacrificed for his family. And he recoiled in law school at the idea that there was not always a legal obligation to help the vulnerable.

“We have to fight the dangerous streams in culture, the consumerism and narcissism and me-ism that erode the borders of our moral culture,” he said. “We can’t put shallow celebrity before core decency. We have to have a deeper faith in the human spirit. As they say, he who has the heart to help has the right to complain.”

Maureen Dowd

The New York Times

American Sisters Under Direction of Holy See

See this article.

Rezko: Blago Knew

Read this article.

ER Overcrowding in Canada

Please see this article.