Considering the variability in how patients are treated in a hospital setting, we can all agree that their outcomes can be vastly different based on their ethnicity, resources, socioeconomic background, and beliefs. Two different people can come to the same hospital for the same procedure and have a completely different experience. [ MedPage Today]

A patient of mine named Mariela* was recently admitted to labor and delivery for the birth of her baby. She was a high-risk, Latina patient who spoke only Spanish. Luckily, I did not have to use an interpreter as I am certified to speak Spanish to patients.

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The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board signed off Tuesday on a plan to build a $34.3 million behavioral health hospital in Peoria. [Health News Illinois]

The hospital, a joint venture between OSF HealthCare and New York-based US HealthVest, will include 100 beds and feature adult specialized inpatient and outpatient behavioral health services, including programs for drug abuse, dual diagnosis of mental health and substance use disorder, women’s trauma, veterans, and seniors.

Martina Sze, chief development officer for US HealthVest, said there has been an “access issue in central Illinois” related to behavioral health services, and it is only getting worse as other systems cut or reduce services.

Other advocates said many patients currently have to go to the Chicago area to access services, which creates further complications when traveling so far from their homes and families.

“We are pleased to relieve a major burden of having to travel so far to obtain needed care,” said Richard Kresch, CEO of US HealthVest.

Officials also defended the application from a review board analysis that found the area already exceeded the necessary number of acute mental illness beds, saying the number has not kept up with the growing demand for services — especially coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Samuel Sears, director of behavioral health physician services at OSF HealthCare, told the review board he relates the current situation to veterans returning from combat, with individuals struggling to transition to a “different world” post-pandemic.

“We were able to build up an extra backlog from that time, along with all the problems that are bubbling to the surface,” Sears said.

The project is anticipated to be completed by the end of 2025.

In other business, the board approved a $388.8 million plan by Northwestern Medicine to add 84 medical surgical beds and 12 intensive care beds to its Lake Forest hospital. It also calls for the expansion and relocation of its emergency department.

Hospital President Marsha Oberrieder told the review board the project is necessary due to high inpatient utilization at the facility in recent years. She noted the total number of patients served by the hospital grew by 43 percent from 2019 to 2021, while the number of Medicaid patients grew by 186 percent over that time.

“One of the lessons learned from the COVID pandemic is that lower occupancy is essential in having the ability to manage unexpected surges,” Oberrieder said.

While the board signed off on the application, several members raised concerns about the high cost of a physical facility.

“I think this is an exorbitant cost,” said Dr. Audrey Lynn Tansley, who was the lone "no" vote on the plan. She and several other members suggested more funds be directed toward transition and outpatient care.

The project is expected to be completed by April 2028.

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Family income is associated with differences in children’s brain development and mental health. This can, in turn, affect later-life outcomes. But it isn’t known how broader social factors, such as the cost of living and the social safety net, can affect the strength of these associations. [NIH Research Matters]

The study suggests that social safety nets can help improve children’s brain development and mental health.

An NIH-funded research team, led by Dr. David Weissman at Harvard University, examined how these differences in children’s brain development and mental health vary across states with different costs of living and anti-poverty programs. To do so, they analyzed data on more than 10,000 children, ages 9-11, from 17 states in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study.

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Poverty in early childhood correlates with lower school achievement and reduced earnings as an adult. It is also associated with differences in brain structure and electrical brain activity. Brain activity exhibits repetitive patterns at various frequencies. More low-frequency activity has been associated with behavioral, attention, and learning problems. Higher-frequency activity has been associated with better language, cognitive, and social-emotional scores. [NIH Matters]

The study adds to growing evidence that interventions to relieve poverty can affect how infants’ brains develop. Photo Juliya Shangarey 

Some evidence suggests that children from lower-income families tend to have more low-frequency activity and less high-frequency activity than those from higher-income families. But it’s not clear whether poverty causes these changes in brain activity or is merely associated with other factors that cause them.

To find out, researchers created the Baby’s First Years study, a randomized controlled trial of poverty reduction in early childhood. In this study, 1,000 low-income mothers of newborns received a cash gift for the first several years of their children’s lives. The size of the gift was randomly chosen to be either $333 or $20 per month. The mothers could spend the money in ways that made the most sense to them, with no strings attached.

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What is the effectiveness of the Parent-focused Redesign for Encounters, Newborns to Toddlers intervention, a model for well-child care that integrates a community health worker into preventive care services at well-child care visits?  [JAMA Network]

Findings  In this cluster randomized clinical trial including 914 parents with a child younger than 2 years of age, those in the intervention group had a higher score for parent-reported receipt of recommended anticipatory guidance during well-child visits vs the usual care group (mean score, 73.9 vs 63.3, respectively); however, emergency department use was similar in the intervention and usual care groups (37.2% vs 36.1%, respectively).

Meaning  Integrating a community health worker into well-child care visits to provide early childhood preventive care services can improve the care that children receive.

Full paper here> 

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The feasibility of AI and machine learning (ML) tools in healthcare settings is up for debate. ChatGPT made headlines after a recent experiment proved it could pass all three parts of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE). At the same time, experts continue to raise concerns about the tool’s limitations in real-life healthcare situations, as well as its proclivity for inaccuracies and bias.

While clinicians and other medical experts continue to debate ML’s effectiveness for treating patients, they’re neglecting a much more dependable and equally impactful use case: administrative work. ML has tremendous potential to streamline tedious administrative tasks and free up valuable time for clinicians, which ultimately leads to better patient outcomes. However, the effectiveness of AI in reducing administrative workloads hinges on providers’ ability to properly incorporate these tools into their work routines. 

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OSF HealthCare’s Jump Trading Simulation & Education Center has generated $180 million in economic impact since opening its doors a decade ago, the health system announced last week. [Health News Illinois] A study, worked on by OSF and Bradley University, also found the facility has created more than 1,000 jobs throughout central Illinois. Additionally, the health system highlighted achievements from the center, such as a smart mirror that reads patient vital signs and 3D printing and virtual reality for presurgical planning. All of that helps better deliver care to patients, Dr. John Vozenilek, vice president and chief medical officer for innovation at OSF HealthCare, told Health News Illinois ahead of the report’s release. “There's a great advantage, especially to OSF, if we can apply these techniques for good purpose for health and wellness, to flip the access curve — no longer relying on the patient to knock on our door to gain access to healthcare — but us reaching out more in anticipation of needs,” he said. Chris Setti, Peoria Economic Development Commission CEO, said the center has not yet approached its full potential. A goal, he said, is for Peoria and healthcare innovation to become as synonymous as Rochester, Minn. and the Mayo Clinic. “That's what OSF is building, in large part because of what Jump has done,” he said. Vozenilek said they continue to partner with providers and institutes of higher learning like the University of Illinois on grants to further develop new technologies, with collaborations occurring either at the center or by filling “trucks with equipment” to work with smaller communities and rural hospitals and train workers there. “We show them the technologies and we show them how we support and provide infrastructure for people with great ideas across disciplines,” Vozenilek said of the collaborations. “And when we try to recruit individuals to come to Peoria, and they can see all of this happening and all of the value and all the opportunity — boy I'll tell you what, the conversation gets quite sweet.” ###

The mission of the Michael Reese Research & Education Foundation is to continue the legacy of Michael Reese Hospital by supporting research, education, and community service through relationships that foster quality health care. Our vision is for the provision of excellent care for all patients, regardless of demographic conditions.

The Michael Reese Foundation realizes this mission through:

● Providing grants for translational research projects, addressing clinical issues, converting

research to practical applications.

● Scholarships for diverse students to complete their health care education and fill the need within

their communities.

● Connecting underserved patients with comprehensive care and other community support

projects.

The Foundation is seeking a new Executive Director due to the retirement of their current executive director. 

More details here> 

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To better understand the social determinants of preterm birth, research efforts have shifted from women’s individual level characteristics toward their exposure to contextual markers. The Index of Concentration at the Extremes (ICE) is a novel measure of spatial social polarization that quantifies the extremes of both privilege and deprivation. Our population-based study adds to the limited published literature on the relation of ICE to preterm birth rates among African-American and non-Latinx white women. We found that the high degree of both racial and income polarization within communities was associated with preterm birth rates even among those who received adequate prenatal care.

Download article here>

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Every day, Adrienne Grimmett and her colleagues at Evara Health in the Tampa Bay area see stories of inequity in their patients’ teeth, gums, and palates.

Marked in painful abscesses, dangerous infections, and missing molars are tales of unequal access to care.

All of these ailments — which keep patients out of work because of pain or social stigma, and children out of school because they can’t concentrate with rotting roots — are preventable.

Annual dental checks are essential to overall health. But of the 67 counties in Florida, experts say, only one has enough dentists to treat all patients. Nine counties in Florida have fewer than three practicing dentists apiece. Lafayette County, in north Florida, doesn’t have a single one.

“It’s a social injustice,” said Grimmett, director of dental services at the not-for-profit, which serves Medicaid and uninsured patients in the Tampa Bay region.

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