Quoted: At American Family Children’s Hospital, RSV is contributing to a very busy time at UW Health Kids. Currently, RSV hospitalizations make up approximately 10% of the patients admitted, according to Dr. Joshua Ross, the chief medical officer and pediatric emergency medicine physician, UW Health Kids.
“We are seeing a record number of patients in our pediatric emergency department, with most coming in due to upper respiratory illnesses like RSV,” Ross said.
Noted: There has also been a spate of recent threats towards facilities providing gender-affirming care. In late September, The New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant followed one week’s worth of news on anti-LGBTQ threats, documenting attacks on Boston Children’s Hospital, Akron Children’s Hospital, the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University, one specific doctor at a University of Wisconsin hospital, and an adolescent clinic at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, in that order.
Noted: Nick Buttrick is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Parenting tweens can be challenging for parents, because their ‘little kid’ who liked to cuddle, learn about the world around them, and was generally happy has suddenly been replaced with a moody, impulsive, physically maturing little human says Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, associate professor of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. As frustrating as this might be sometimes for parents, it is all developmentally normal.
“UW Health informed the patient that he will not be responsible for any out-of-pocket costs associated with this procedure,” UW Health said in a statement Friday. “We work with our payor associates to ensure patients have accurate information on all care and procedures, including accurate estimates for cost expectations. We continue to work together to make this a seamless and consistent process for our patients.”
Quoted: Administrators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are also coming up with ways to solve the current training problem, but they’re also beginning to worry about future recruitment.
Dr. Laura Jacques, an assistant professor and the director of medical student education at UW-Madison’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, said the repercussions could be felt for years.
“I’m worried that we’re going to have a challenging time recruiting the best residents to our program because of these concerns, and not just for obstetrics and gynecology, but for all types of medicine,” she said.
UW Health, which is building a $438 million, six-story clinic on Madison’s Far East Side, benefitted from the positive financial picture last year.
UW Hospital had the highest net income of the state’s 152 reporting hospitals, with $429.1 million, for an operating margin of 9.1%, according to WHA. The hospital also had the highest net income in fiscal 2020, with $201.5 million, for an operating margin of 5.1%.
“The sample size seems concerningly small for devices that affect the health of millions of patients,” said David Sterken, a hospitalist at the University of Wisconsin who spoke before the panel, which met virtually for eight hours.
Autonomous flying drones could deliver life-saving defibrillators to people experiencing cardiac arrest, says a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who’s been involved in the research.
Ambulances aren’t always fast enough, especially in rural areas where an automated external defibrillator, or AED, isn’t available.
Survival rates drop by as much as 10% for each minute that passes without treatment, according to Justin Boutilier, an assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering and co-author of several medical journal articles on the use of drones to deliver AEDs.
Noted: The state’s two other OB-GYN residency programs − at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, and Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee − are vulnerable as well.
An Aurora spokesperson said Thursday the hospital also plans to send OB-GYN residents out of state, though they would not provide specifics of the arrangement. A UW doctor said they are in the process of determining a course of action.
“We are committed to following the ACGME mandates of training our residents and putting out well-trained obstetrician gynecologists,” said Dr. Laura Jacques, an assistant professor and academic specialist in obstetrics and gynecology. “We are actively exploring options.”
Becky Schachter, a nurse with University of Wisconsin Health, has been in the field for 25 years. She said that experienced nurses just keep leaving and that she’s never seen this many vacancies.
Hospitals across the nation are experiencing a surge in respiratory illnesses among children.
And hospitals in Wisconsin aren’t immune.
University of Wisconsin assistant professor of adult and pediatric infectious disease Dr. Joseph McBride says practitioners are “without a doubt” seeing higher numbers of respiratory issues in children. He specifically points to “respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.”
“RSV is a common seasonal virus that pediatricians, healthcare providers, young parents and families are well aware of year-in and year-out,” McBride says. “What’s interesting about RSV is that in the setting of COVID and all the mask use, it kind of threw off our normal seasonality of it. Usually it’s pretty predictable each year starting toward the end of fall, in to the winter during our normal cough-and-cold season that we would see spikes in RSV.”
Morning rounds at the animal hospital on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus start at 8 a.m. sharp. That means the days begin around dawn for veterinary medicine students in their fourth and final year of school, when clinical rotations largely replace classwork.
Quoted: Patrick Remington, a former epidemiologist for the CDC and director of the Preventive Medicine Residency Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said COVID-19 vaccines have turned out to not be as effective as initially hoped but “the one aspect that every scientist agrees is that this is one of the safest vaccines ever produced, if not the safest vaccine.”
“I think it’s very worrisome that any politician would view information that is not scientifically sound or that maybe comes from a conspiracy theory,” he said. “I would be very concerned if that information resonates with their base, because then we’ll have policy that is being determined not by science and evidence but by superstition and by conspiracy, and that should be concerning for everybody.”
Former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, who served as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and has endorsed Michels, promoted COVID-19 vaccines to college students while he was president of the University of Wisconsin System during the coronavirus pandemic but did not mandate them.
Thompson said Friday he hadn’t seen Michels’ comments on the CDC and COVID-19 vaccines because he has been traveling out of state. He said spreading rumors about COVID-19 vaccine mandates is a bad idea.
“This rumor now about CDC requiring children being vaccinated should not be spread,” Thompson said.
“You get these sharp images, and you can distinguish soft tissues,” said Dr. Scott Reeder, chief of MRI at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “It’s central to many things we do in modern medicine.” MRIs help doctors diagnose brain tumors, strokes, spinal cord injuries, liver diseases and cancer. The 3D images, experts say, are irreplaceable.
VIDEO: Dr. Nicholas Kuehnel, a pediatric emergency medicine physician from UW Health, has ways for parents and families to focus on safety this Halloween
Quoted: “When COVID came about, there were a lot of interventions that happened — masking, social distancing and lots of places closed,” said Dr. Dan Shirley, UW Health’s medical director for infection prevention. “Those same interventions that prevent COVID also prevented the flu.”
Dr Megan Moreno, professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin who researches how technology can affect the health of adolescents, warned that the trend could potentially encourage young people to drink.
Neuroscientist Julie Stamm, a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told CNN it can typically take 10 to 14 days after a concussion for the brain to get back to its baseline condition.
As the demand for nurses grows across Wisconsin, nursing education programs are struggling to churn out enough graduates — but not for lack of applicants. Instead, schools are facing dwindling numbers of faculty and limited classroom space, forcing them to turn away prospective students.
The location of the bumps on your face can also help you figure out whether they’re the result of rosacea. “Hormonal acne or other forms of adult acne tend to involve more of the lower face, whereas with rosacea we see the involvement of the nose, the central part of the cheeks and the center of the forehead,” said Dr. Apple Bodemer, a board-certified dermatologist and associate professor of dermatology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
In May, Gov. Tony Evers awarded the System a $5 million grant from federal stimulus dollars to partner with telehealth company Mantra to provide virtual counseling and psychiatry appointments, a crisis helpline and a platform where students can do self-assessments, System Director of Student Behavioral Health John Achter said.
Quoted: David Canon, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told us by email that it’s not uncommon for a candidate to shift positions after winning a primary or so close to a general election.
“Michels clearly has switched his position on abortion, saying that he would sign a bill with exceptions for rape and incest (after previously saying he did not support exceptions),” Canon said. “We are seeing this all over the country with candidates moving more to the center for the general election.”
Now, almost 20 years later and with his own tattoo shop, Siewert is offering pre-designed cancer ribbon tattoos throughout October and has pledged to donate all the profits to the UW Health Carbone Cancer Center’s Medical Oncology Clinic, in his mother’s memory.
Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services announced a $16 million, statewide investment Wednesday to improve maternal and infant health, especially among people of color.
The funding, largely made possible through the American Rescue Plan Act, will be split between the state health department’s Maternal and Child Health program, the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Healthier Wisconsin Endowment and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health. Each entity will receive $5.5 million.
The MCW endowment fund and UW-Madison will use the funding to also support community grants for programs that focus on the social conditions that contribute to racial disparities in Wisconsin’s maternal and infant mortality rates.
A2011 state law that banned most collective bargaining for most public employees removed UW Hospital from another state law that governs unions for private sector workers, UW Health argues in legal briefs before the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission.
Noted: One of the major polluters, Sonoda said, is the fossil fuel industry. Across the country, coal-fired and gas power plants make up a third of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2020 University of Wisconsin-Madison study.
According to the UW-Madison study, transitioning to 100 percent clean energy would save $21 billion per year by averting health issues. That change, the study said, would prevent nearly 2,000 premature deaths, 650 respiratory emergency room visits and 34,400 cases of asthma exacerbation each year.
Dr. Ned Kalin, chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Psychiatry, has been studying the genetics and neurobiology of stress and anxiety for decades. One of the big surprises he’s uncovered is that the amygdala, the brain structure long thought to be the seat of fear, is not genetically associated with anxiety.
Peterson said UW Hospital, which stopped collection lawsuits in March 2020, has not restarted them, according to ABC for Health’s analysis of court records this year. UnityPoint Health-Meriter, which has a joint operating agreement with UW Health, also apparently did not have any cases this year.
The latest data point to add to the pandemic blunder of punishing children during COVID comes from a study promoted by the American Academy of Pediatrics. According to the study by Dr. Drew Watson, a team physician for the University of Wisconsin Athletics, the cancellation of youth sports during the pandemic “was accompanied by decreased physical activity and quality of life, as well as startlingly high levels of anxiety and depression.”
Quoted: Study author Dr. Drew Watson, physician for the University of Wisconsin Athletics, said: ‘The cancellation of sports in the early pandemic was accompanied by decreased physical activity and quality of life, as well as startlingly high levels of anxiety and depression.
“Although the return to sports has been associated with large improvements in physical activity levels, quality of life and mental health, we are still seeing higher levels of anxiety and depression than before Covid, suggesting that this will remain a vitally important priority for years to come.”
Tyler Lark, a geographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, grew up among farms, working on a neighbor’s dairy, vaguely aware of the tension between clearing land to grow food and preserving nature. As an engineering student working on water projects in Haiti, he saw an extreme version of that conflict: forests cleared for firewood or to grow crops, producing soil erosion, environmental denudation and worsening poverty. “I think it was that experience that told me, ‘Hey, land use is important,’” he says.
Includes interview with Dr. Laura Jacques who teaches obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Dr. Katherine Gast had become accustomed to the odd social media comment or email from someone who does not support or understand gender affirmation procedures she provides to her transgender patients.
But Gast, a co-director at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s UW Health gender services program, was blindsided by what happened when the social media outrage machine that has developed around transgender issues came for her.
On the afternoon of Sept. 23, a two-minute video of Gast describing gender-affirming operations was posted by the Twitter account Libs of TikTok, a self-described news service that acts as an outrage content factory for conservatives.
Quoted: Dr. Ajay Sethi, professor of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the shift is needed after the federal government ended its free, at-home COVID-19 testing program at the end of August.
“With the rapid at-home test, you can start taking precautions, and that was the beauty of the federal at-home test distribution program,” Sethi said. “But the funding dried out, and I’m glad to see that the state is going to make rapid tests more accessible.”
In efforts to boost the health care workforce, UnityPoint Health-Meriter is building a training center along the Beltline and UW Health is expanding efforts to recruit nurses and train other workers.
Recent studies have been raising medical questions surrounding COVID-19. As an example: many are wondering if the vaccine is safe for women and their menstrual cycle, and can COVID-19 cause diabetes in children.
There is also still controversy surrounding masking and when it is recommended.
To answer some of the questions that have begun popping up recently, we were joined by Dr. Bill Hartman from University of Wisconsin Health in Madison on Tuesday, Oct. 4.
“I love Paul Chryst, I think he’s a good guy, but I think it was the right move to make,” UW-Madison freshman Simon Ross said.
Driving a university-owned van, University of Wisconsin-Madison student Morgan Barlin traverses the campus, making stops at three dining halls on a spring afternoon.
At each stop, Barlin is met by kitchen staff who present her with various leftover foods, from sweet potatoes to breakfast omelets. These foods, which would have otherwise been thrown away, will be redistributed to students at no cost.
At the end of her route, Barlin records the weight of each donation. Her calculations show that on this day, she saved 271 pounds of food from ending up in the landfill. Barlin’s organization, the Food Recovery Network at the UW-Madison, uses the recovered food to provide free community meals.
Beyond efforts on the UW-Madison campus, other programs in Wisconsin intercept still-edible food from grocery and convenience stores and restaurants that would normally be heading to the dumpster. In Madison, The River Food Pantry operates a food recovery program that collects food from more than 100 stores around Dane County.
The director of the Alzheimer’s Institute at UW’s School of Medicine and Public Health said this is an exciting step toward finding a cure.
Quoted: But mobile markets can struggle to stay financially afloat. One researcher who has studied mobile markets for over a decade likens them to “revolving doors” because of how frequently mobile market projects start up and then stall.
“There’s often funding to start them,” said Lydia Zepeda, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor. “The question is trying to find a model that is financially sustainable — because they’re expensive.”
Noted: Even before the pandemic, nearly 20% of adults in Wisconsin had mental health needs, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. That percentage translated to about 830,000 people.
At about the same time — again, before the pandemic — a report by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute found significant coverage gaps across the state. The report said 55 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties had “significant shortages” of psychiatrists and 31 counties need more than two additional full-time psychiatrists to make up for the shortage.
On the other hand, some worry the mental health care workforce just isn’t there to support the spate of new patients who’ll test positive for anxiety disorders.
“I support it,” said Dr. Marcia Slattery, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of UW Anxiety Disorders Program. “Anxiety is the most prevalent psychiatric disorder and impacts life globally. The fact that it’s so widespread and there’s really been no coordinated effort to address it, I’m in support of what they’re proposing.”
Nursing has taken Susan Gold around the globe and back again, upwards of 30 times.Now her sights are set on an upcoming two-week humanitarian trip to Tanzania. The trip is focused on pediatric malnutrition and family planning where Gold will connect with 35 families alongside an African doctor and community health workers.
UW Health nurse Susan Gold is known as the most un-retired person on campus. Even though she retired a few years ago, she can’t seem to hang up her stethoscope.
A hallmark of the pandemic may fall to the wayside at UW Health, but COVID-19 cases have to fall first. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance on masking Monday, allowing hospitals and nursing homes to drop mask requirements unless they are in an area of high COVID-19 transmission.
UW-Madison researchers are studying psilocybin, the hallucinogenic ingredient in “magic mushrooms,” to treat people with opioid and methamphetamine use disorders, in what they say are the first such clinical trials anywhere.
Noted: In addition, awards are going to Drexel University to examine the use of medical services in underserved populations with autism, a Duke University study focused on developing new methods for screening kids for autism, a project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison following adults with autism as they age, an investigation of the emotional and mental health of adults with autism at the University of Pittsburgh, an effort at the University of Virginia to establish methods to identify adolescents and adults who are frequently misdiagnosed, diagnosed late or overlooked altogether and a Johns Hopkins University study looking at how genetic and environmental factors impact autism and health outcomes.
Noted: The program has reduced costs for state Medicaid programs by $2.1 million a year and for behavioral health services by $715,000 a year for mental health services, according to a brief by the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Dr. Thomas Zdeblick stepped down after 22 years of service as chair of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s department of orthopedics.
Microplastics are ubiquitous. The tiny plastic particles have been found in the air, oceans and food — they’ve even made it to our gut.
But for all the research on microplastics, there’s been little study on nano- and microplastic pollution in the Great Lakes. Now, University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professors Haoran Wei and Mohan Qin are pioneering that effort.
Quoted: Dr. Patricia Tellez-Giron, family medicine physician at UW Health, associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and Latino Health Council chair, has been practicing family medicine for 25 years. In that time, she’s been able to uniquely observe intergenerational care as her patients grow from infancy into new family systems as adults.
Tellez-Giron said it’s common, especially for Hispanic or Latino children, to be split between two cultures, which can feel like navigating two worlds simultaneously. This speaks to an absence in diverse counselors, Tellez-Giron said, and specifically, culturally competent counselors — that is, health care providers who understand and can uplift a client’s cultural identity.
“Often, the therapist does not understand our culture, why we are protective, how we all raise the kids together,” Tellez-Giron said. “And then (the therapists) tell the kids, ‘You have to be independent. You have to demand your independence.’ That creates, definitely, tension in the family.”
Quoted: Alexia Kulwiec, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School for Workers, said she would like to see the federal government return to providing tax incentives for employers who provide paid sick leave for people with long COVID.
Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, employers providing paid leave for up to two weeks to employees for COVID-19 could receive reimbursements in the form of tax credits, but the program ended in March 2021.
“It’s very disheartening to see that the policies that came out during COVID have essentially been reversed and undone, so they’re not there to protect employees today,” Kulwiec said.
Danielle Yancey will moderate a panel titled “Lasting Impacts: How the Pandemic has Amplified our Health Inequities” on Tuesday, October 11, the second day of the 2022 Wisconsin Leadership Summit.
Danielle Yancey (Menominee/Santee) has worked in public service for nearly twenty years focusing on programs that promote social justice, education access, and equity. Currently, she serves as the director for the Native American Center for Health Professions at the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Danielle grew up on the Menominee Indian reservation in north central Wisconsin. She is an alumna of the University of Wisconsin-Madison with undergraduate degrees in women’s studies and social welfare, Master of Science in urban and regional planning, and holds a sustainability leadership graduate certificate from Edgewood College.
“There is simply too much uncertainty about what happens next,” David O’Connor, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin, told The Daily Beast. “Will future variants outrun existing vaccines and therapeutics? What will be the impact of long COVID years, and potentially decades, from now? What other challenges can we not foresee three years into COVID-19 that will challenge us collectively in 2025, 2030, 2040 and beyond?”
Typically about 50-55% of the state will get the vaccine from year to year, and last year’s drop means it’s more important than ever to stay up to date on vaccinations.
UW-Madison School for Workers professor Don Taylor explains an agreement between UW Health and nurses to halt a planned strike and communicate amid disputes over the legal status of a union campaign.
Supporters and nurses gathered at Madison Labor Temple Tuesday evening to celebrate an agreement between UW Health and SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin. The deal announced Monday, which narrowly averted a three-day strike this week, stops short of recognizing the nurses’ union.
Quoted: Alexia Kulwiec, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School for Workers, said she would like to see the federal government return to providing tax incentives for employers who provide paid sick leave for people with Long COVID.
Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, employers providing paid leave for up to two weeks to employees for COVID-19 could receive reimbursements in the form of tax credits, but the program ended in March 2021.
“It’s very disheartening to see that the policies that came out during COVID have essentially been reversed and undone, so they’re not there to protect employees today,” Kulwiec said.
What Amy Kind observed during her residency as a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston often frustrated and angered her.
She could admit a poor person to the hospital again and again, each time potentially costing tens of thousands of dollars.
“Yet changing someone’s ability to have safe housing — even getting an air conditioner for someone with breathing problems — was not something I could do,” said Kind, now a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Shortly after former University of Wisconsin Dr. Barbara Knox left Alaska in April, two sets of parents filed a federal lawsuit alleging Knox made “false accusations” of child abuse against them.
