Community Health

To our shame, 46 million people in this country lack health care coverage, and 800,000 of them reside in this state. A similar number of Marylanders have inadequate coverage. Though we are the nation's second-wealthiest state, officials have rejected proposed improvements in health care as too expensive, and it has been nearly impossible to build the consensus necessary for reform. Happily, it turns out that we've already allocated our health care system much of the money it needs. Hardly anyone has heard of community benefit dollars, but they're ours to use. Here's how. The Internal Revenue Service requires that nonprofit hospitals spend community benefit funds at the recommended rate of 5 percent of their total operating costs.

As part of "Celebrate Merriweather," a daylong family festival marking Columbia's 40th birthday, Howard County General Hospital will hold a Community Health Fair from noon to 5 p.m. July 15 at Merriweather Post Pavilion. About 70 exhibitors will provide screenings and health and safety information. Local nonprofit organizations will provide information on services available in the community. The fair, which is being held on the final day of Columbia's birthday celebration, will be in Merriweather Post Pavilion's VIP parking area; signs will guide motorists to the VIP parking lot. Admission is free.

PHILDELPHIA - They began in 1965 as an experiment to bring high-quality health care to the inner-city poor. In the years since, community health centers have become a staple of the nation's urban landscape.But as the managed-care boom creates new competition for low-income patients, health centers are losing the very group of people they cared for when few others would.To offset falling revenue as Medicaid patients are steered into health maintenance organizations, many centers are cutting back on staff and services.

A bill that would let doctors and hospitals form nonprofit "community health networks" to compete with health maintenance organizations cleared a critical hurdle yesterday, gaining approval from a previously skeptical House committee.The House Economic Matters Committee, which had killed similar legislation in past years, approved this year's legislation by voice vote after amending it to require such networks to meet the same regulatory standards as HMOs.Only two delegates, Del. Victoria L. Schade, an Anne Arundel Republican, and Del. Nathaniel Exum, a Prince George's Democrat, dissented.

Helix Health announced yesterday that it will launch a Medicaid managed-care organization called Helix Family Choice, essentially functioning as an HMO for medical assistance patients.The five Helix hospitals get about 15 percent of their inpatient admissions from Medicaid patients, "and we don't think you're going to get [those patients] for the future if you're just a provider," said James A. Oakey, Helix president and chief executive officer.By setting up an organization to enroll patients, rather than just caring for those enrolled in other HMOs, Oakey said, "what it talks about is control of your own destiny."

The nine-hospital Atlantic Health alliance is launching its first high-profile network-wide effort: a community health assessment that will include more than 10,000 surveys mailed to random households.The project also will include focus groups, a survey of health providers and a steering committee for each hospital community made up of representatives from groups ranging from the Heart Association to the local sheriff's office.While "many efforts of Atlantic Health relate to cost reduction, and are internal and operational, we do have objectives that involve community service," said Lori Anderson, acting chief operating officer of Atlantic.

In the midst of increasing medical costs and a growing emphasis on preventive health care, Northwest Hospital Center has formed an innovative task force aimed at improving the well-being of the community it serves.The Randallstown hospital's new community health board is made up of health officials and professionals, Baltimore County officials, residents and area business owners. It resulted from a task force organized last year by the Northwest Hospital System Board to address health issues.

Alice Murray could be playing golf. Or bridge. Or just spending time relaxing on her 68-acre farm in Cumberstone, sitting on the porch overlooking the West River.After 36 years as a public health nurse, most folks figured she had earned a little R&R when she retired from the Anne Arundel County Health Department in April 1993.But after a four-month trip to Japan to visit her daughter and son-in-law who were stationed there with the U.S. Navy and two weeks back home "to clean house," Mrs. Murray was back to what she loved best -- community health -- this time volunteering three or four days a week at the Owensville Medical Center in South County.

2 hospital companies mergingCommunity Health Systems Inc. will buy Hallmark Healthcare Corp. in a $175 million stock and debt deal that merges two of the nation's largest owners of rural and suburban hospitals.Community Health will exchange 0.97 shares of its common stock for each share of Hallmark's common stock. In addition, Community Health will exchange 5.4 shares of its common stock for each share of Hallmark's preferred stock.The merger also calls for Houston-based Community Health to assume $87.6 million of Hallmark's debt.

State budget cuts have forced county health officials to stop surveying older Carroll communities for septic tank failures, which could mean that nobody will spot a need for a public sewage system to protect community health."

After ducking the nation's health care crisis for many years, Congress finally stands on the verge of passing comprehensive health reform. Each of several bills on the table would build on our existing public-private system to bring us much closer to making comprehensive, high-quality health care available to all Americans. Maryland is the wealthiest state in the nation. Yet almost one in five residents is uninsured or underinsured, and many more are just one medical bill from bankruptcy or foreclosure.

The neighborhood where a 5-year-old girl was hit by a stray bullet is among the bleakest areas of Baltimore, based on community health statistics. Of the 55 city neighborhoods, Southwest Baltimore's life expectancy ranks third worst, at 64.2 years, a 2008 health profile found. Most of the other health indicators knock Southwest Baltimore into the lowest third. Caroline Fichtenberg, the Health Department's chief epidemiologist, said that although other neighborhoods share Southwest Baltimore's dire circumstances, that area's poverty level - about 19 percent of the population - heavily contributes to its poor health.

Education can heal health disparities The Baltimore Sun's shocking front-page statistics on the life-span differences among Baltimore neighborhoods stunned even seasoned community health professionals like me and my staff ("20-year life gap separates city's poorest, wealthy," Oct. 16). But they shouldn't. This is just the latest study confirming what we see every day in our health centers: outrageous health disparities related to poverty, lifestyle, environmental exposure and other preventable causes.

Oretha T. Wondee had gotten her family safely out of the West African country of Liberia, where 14 years of war had surrounded them with violence, ruined the economy and cost hundreds of thousands their homes. But as a new refugee in Baltimore nine months ago, she began to see threats of a different kind to her five children. She didn't know how to ward off illness and infection. She didn't know where to go if someone had a toothache. She'd never heard of 911. Wondee got some of the basics from the nonprofit group that resettled her in Baltimore.

To our shame, 46 million people in this country lack health care coverage, and 800,000 of them reside in this state. A similar number of Marylanders have inadequate coverage. Though we are the nation's second-wealthiest state, officials have rejected proposed improvements in health care as too expensive, and it has been nearly impossible to build the consensus necessary for reform. Happily, it turns out that we've already allocated our health care system much of the money it needs. Hardly anyone has heard of community benefit dollars, but they're ours to use. Here's how. The Internal Revenue Service requires that nonprofit hospitals spend community benefit funds at the recommended rate of 5 percent of their total operating costs.

As part of "Celebrate Merriweather," a daylong family festival marking Columbia's 40th birthday, Howard County General Hospital will hold a Community Health Fair from noon to 5 p.m. July 15 at Merriweather Post Pavilion. About 70 exhibitors will provide screenings and health and safety information. Local nonprofit organizations will provide information on services available in the community. The fair, which is being held on the final day of Columbia's birthday celebration, will be in Merriweather Post Pavilion's VIP parking area; signs will guide motorists to the VIP parking lot. Admission is free.

Talk about your welcoming committee. As hundreds of guests at Zoomerang! 2007 arrived at the Maryland Zoo's main gate, they were not only greeted by party chairs Stuart and Suzanne Amos and zoo president Billie Grieb, but also by a few "animal ambassadors," including camels, a rooster, a baby alligator and a toucan. "Oooh, I love penguins," trilled Zoo board member Carole Sibel, as she spotted one trotting after its keeper. "There's a little owl called Pellet, who's the cutest little thing I've ever seen," cooed Celeste Corsaro, marketing director of Baltimore Eats.

After more than two decades with the same set of dentures, Eleanor Noe of Annapolis would love nothing more than to see a dentist. As a part-time employee making deliveries for a local florist, though, she has not been able to afford to go , she said. "I know a lot of people who are like this," she said. "There are a lot of hardworking people who just can't afford it. Companies don't cover part-time employees, and it's just hard." For those in Arundel County who are in Noe's situation, things may be looking up. Beginning in August, the county Department of Health will offer reduced-price dental care to hundreds of low-income adults without dental insurance.

The hurricane that scattered patients and their doctors in the Gulf Coast, leaving both homeless and up to thousands of miles apart, also has left them in medical limbo. Evacuated diabetics hunt down insulin in their adopted hometowns. Cancer patients fret about where to go to continue the care that might save their lives. Physicians wonder if they should even think about returning to damaged homes and destroyed clinics when their patients are gone. And people scheduled for surgery at now-closed New Orleans hospitals search for others to perform operations that in some cases are desperately needed.

Politicians do it all the time: target churches to reach African-Americans. But instead of wooing voters, health care advocates hope to tap into the power of black clergy to educate blacks on health problems gripping their communities. St. Agnes HealthCare and the foundation of former Orioles star and cancer survivor Eric Davis announced yesterday that they have teamed up on a three-year program to educate ministers on diseases that disproportionately affect blacks. "We are going directly to the leaders," said Angela Hunt, executive director of the Eric Davis Foundation, a nonprofit group born after the Oriole outfielder's colorectal cancer was diagnosed in 1997.