Medical news

The Walk with a Doc program sponsored by Franciscan Health meets every Tuesday afternoon at 5:00. The program starts with a short talk by a medical professional and then participants walk a mile-long loop through Weston Cemetery.

On Tuesday afternoon the Walk-with A Doc program featured Dr Ibekie who recently opened an office in Morocco. Dr Ibekie is a native of Nigeria who has a medical practice in Merrillville. In 2016 he decided that the time had come to give back to the community by providing medical services to an underserved area and Morocco fit that bill.

He drove to Morocco to check out the town. He parked in the downtown and was looking through the windows of one of the many empty buildings when he turned around to find a policeman behind him. The policeman was very friendly and when he learned that Dr Ibekie was interested in establishing a clinic in Morocco, took him to town hall where the town clerk was so excited with the prospect that she called the entire town council to come to meet him. The clinic is open only on the weekends. It is a non-profit organization and charges a fee of $30 for services for those who have no insurance.

The medical topic he addressed was the opioid problem. He believes that it is a medical problem that should be handled by the medical profession, not the criminal justice system. He talked about a bunch of drugs that I did not recognize, but his point was that with proper prescribing of drugs and counseling, people can overcome their addictions. This summer he will be introducing the program he is using, the Medically Assisted Treatment Program or MAT, to Rensselaer's Franciscan Hospital.

On Wednesday Franciscan Health Rensselaer had an event called "State of Health Care". It was mostly about the services that the hospital offers, but the presentation began by reviewing statistics that show that Jasper County residents do not have healthy lifestyles. We smoke too much and are obese. The data can be found here.

Franciscan Rensselaer is a Critical Access Hospital. The federal government created this designation in the 1990s to help rural hospitals stay financially viable. There are certain payments that the designation gives that hospitals without the designation do not receive. (For more, see here.)

One of the features of the hospital that I had not been aware of was their in-house training using simulations with a mannequin. I wanted to take some pictures but my camera jammed. Fortunately the nurse in charge sent me one that she had taken. (The simulation room is the old obstetrical nursery.)

The mannequin is wired to a computer and the computer operator/trainer can control pulse, breathing, and blood pressure. The trainee is given an initial set of conditions and then must decide what treatment is best. The mannequin responds to the treatment (with the help of the trainer at the computer) and the student may then need to adjust the treatment or do something else. The end result can be death even if all the decisions were made correctly. It may be good to experience death of a mannequin before one experiences death of a real person.

The hospital would like to upgrade the mannequin with one that is wireless. This would allow the trainer to be in a different room, which would make the simulation more realistic. They would also like to record the sessions so they can review the playback with the trainee.

The hospital offers a wide range of services by using visiting doctors who come one day a week or every other week.

They currently offer several areas of telemedicine using telecommunications with a physician offsite. They are working on adding telecardiology to their telemedicine menu.

Below are slides of services that the hospital provides.

Improvements in offerings of radiology are in the works. The leadership of the hospital is always trying to add more visiting specialists and some new areas may be added this year. There seems to have been a lot of negative feelings toward the old Jasper County Hospital and the Franciscan leadership is trying to change that image. When the people attending were asked what additional services were most needed, several mentioned mental health.

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The previous post mentioned that the City Council approved the continuance of some tax abatements and this seems to have been misinterpreted by some people. Tax abatements usually last for several years (10 is common) and decline in value with time. They are given with conditions attached and are reviewed every year. If a company does not meet the conditions under which the abatement was given, the abatement can be canceled. What the City did at its last meeting was approve continuing existing abatements. There were no new abatements granted.