Copyright 2000 The Buffalo News
The Buffalo News
September 10, 2000, Sunday, NIAGARA EDITION
SECTION: NIAGARA WEEK, Pg. 6NC
LENGTH: 1377 words
HEADLINE:
AREA HOSPITALS MAKING NEW STRIDES IN PATIENT CARE AND;
COMFORT
BYLINE: JOANN SCELSA; News Niagara Bureau
BODY:
Several hospitals around the county
are taking new steps in the field of pain management.
Kaleida Health's
Pain Rehab Center of Western New York last month relocated from Maple Road in
Williamsville to DeGraff Outpatient Wellness Center on the campus of Kaleida's
DeGraff Memorial Hospital, 415 Tremont St., North Tonawanda.
All
services formerly offered at the Maple Road site will be provided by the same
team of pain management specialists, including physicians and Kaleida staff.
Physicians are board-certified in pain medicine, said Tamara B. Owen,
administrator for orthopedics and rehabilitation services.
The Pain
Rehab Center's new site offers several advantages, including newly renovated
facilities, more patient exam rooms, opportunity for expanded office hours,
improved phone service and ample parking adjacent to the entrance of the
building, Kaleida officials said. The new phone number is 690-2008.
Owen
said putting the clinic on a hospital campus provides greater access to other
diagnostic and treatment services and other medical professionals, social
workers, psychology services and physical therapy. The Pain Rehab Center
provides interdisciplinary evaluation and treatment of chronic pain.
"By
moving it to DeGraff, it really allows us to expand the physical therapy
services because it's a much bigger department at DeGraff," she said.
Chronic pain generally is defined as pain that lasts more than three
months, does not respond to conventional treatments, keeps one from sleeping,
disrupts work and family relationships, and causes one to lose interest in
everything. It can be caused by a variety of sources, including accidents,
injuries and disease, according to Owen.
Pain management treatment also
is available at Lockport Memorial Hospital's main campus at 521 East Ave.,
434-9111, and Inter-Community Memorial Hospital, 2600 Williams Street, Newfane,
778-5111.
Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center and Mount St. Mary's
Hospital and Health Center in Lewiston are working on new pain management
programs.
"We just started a new pain management committee," said Marcia
M. Traverse, spokeswoman for St. Mary's. "This is a very important aspect of
good care and one that we are devoting time and resources to."
Anne
Kellick Skowronski, spokeswoman for Memorial, said the medical center also is
working on a pain management program, but details are not available yet.
Memorial is offering a free presentation, "How to Manage Chronic Pain,"
from 7 to 9 p.m. Sept. 21 at the Como restaurant, 2220 Pine Ave. The program
will feature Dr. David Bagnall, a physical medicine specialist. Experts in the
fields of nutrition, fitness, stress management and cancer care will be
available for consultation. Registration is required by calling 278-4604.
Kellick Skowronski said the session will be an offshoot of a panel
presentation on end-of-life issues to be presented Thursday, but either session
can be attended individually.
There will be three sessions on
end-of-life issues and options around the county in conjunction with the airing
this week of "On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying." The four-part series by
television journalists Bill and Judith Moyers, which looks at issues surrounding
the final phase of life, will be broadcast today through Wednesday on WNED-TV,
Channel 17.
More than 200 community coalitions nationwide have come
together to build on the Moyerses' series and facilitate community dialogues on
treatment preferences, values and what the community can do to improve
end-of-life care. Topics include advance directives, caregiver support,
spiritual care, dealing with grief and healing.
The local community
panel discussions, which will be held in conjunction with Niagara Hospice, will
be:
10 to 11:30 a.m. and 7 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday in the auditorium of
Memorial Medical Center, 621 10th St., Niagara Falls. Space is limited and
registration is required. Phone 278-4604.
6:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday,
Niagara Hospice, 4675 Sunset Road, Lockport.
6:30 to 9 p.m. Sept. 19,
Mount St. Mary's Hospital, 5300 Military Road, Lewiston.
Also around the
county:
Both St. Mary's and Memorial Medical Center announced new
patient advocacy programs last month.
Modeled after similar programs in
hospitals across the nation, the St. Mary's Patient Advocacy staff will work
with patients, their families, hospital staff and physicians to improve
communication and to help with any issues and concerns that they may have,
Traverse said.
At Memorial, officials said the program will help
patients navigate the admitting process, access diagnostic and community
services, obtain insurance coverage, address patient care issues and coordinate
long-term care placement.
The Medical Center also has streamlined its
patient registration process by consolidating the departments of Centralized
Scheduling, Surgery Scheduling, Pre-op Reservations and Patient Registration
into a new department, Patient Access Services. The department will expedite the
scheduling and registration process and reduce the time it takes for patients to
access Memorial's programs and services. To be added this fall: Greenlighting, a
pre-registration system that will enable scheduled outpatients to report
directly to the point of service when they arrive at the Medical Center; and
bedside registration, for the Emergency Department and inpatient floors.
Inter-Community Memorial Hospital and Lockport Memorial Hospital have
announced the start of the "Partners for a Healthy Community" speakers bureau in
conjunction with Newfane Rehabilitation and Health Care Center and Niagara Home
Care. The bureau will offer free presentations on a wide range of health care
topics to service, business, community and church groups. The presentations may
range from 15 minutes to one hour. Groups as small as five people may be
accommodated, according to Susan Wendler, director of public relations for
Lockport Memorial.
Carolyn Moore, director of community relations at
Inter-Community Memorial, said topics will range from specific medical
conditions to nutrition, exercise, healthy living, long-term care planning,
preventive medicine, health care proxies and insurance.
To find out more
about the bureau or schedule a presentation, call Inter-Community Memorial at
778-5071, Ext. 570; Lockport Memorial at 514-5505; or Health Connections at
514-5784.
St. Mary's Hospital and Health Center has begun a universal
newborn hearing screening program that will enable all infants
to be screened for hearing impairment before going home from the Hospital. Until
now, routine newborn hearing screening had been performed only
for high-risk infants in neonatal intensive care units across the state. But
because a delay in identification of a hearing impairment tremendously affects a
child's language development, all babies born in New York will be screened
beginning Sept. 1, Traverse said.
Hearing impairment is the most common
disability at birth, she said. Every year nearly 24,000 babies are born in the
United States with hearing impairments.
"For children not screened for
hearing loss at birth, the average age of identification is 21/2 to 3 years of
age, well after the critical period for language development has passed," said
Debra Hastee, maternity nurse coordinator. "Many people do not realize that
hearing aids and therapy are available for infants as soon as they are a few
weeks old."
Research shows that infants identified at birth as having
hearing impairment have a greater opportunity to develop with the normal range
of language comprehension, verbal expression and psychosocial development than
do children identified later.
"We are using the 'gold standard' in
newborn hearing testing. The ALGO Newborn Hearing Screener tests the baby's
entire hearing pathway, from the ear to the brain stem. It records the baby's
brain wave response to a series of soft clicks and compares them to a pattern of
normal response," said Hastee.
The testing is conducted while the baby
sleeps, is noninvasive and takes from two to 15 minutes. Parents have the
results before the baby goes home from the hospital.
For information on
the newborn hearing screening program, call 298-2332.
LOAD-DATE: September 12, 2000
